The
Safavid dynastySafavid dynasty (/ˈsɑːfəvɪd/; Persian: دودمان
صفوی‎ Dudmān e Safavi[24]) was one of the most significant
ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the beginning of modern
Iranian history.[25] The Safavid shahs ruled over one of the Gunpowder
Empires.[26] They ruled one of the greatest Iranian empires after the
7th-century Muslim conquest of Iran,[27][28][29][30] and established
the
TwelverTwelver school of
Shia IslamShia Islam as the official religion of the
empire,[31] marking one of the most important turning points in Muslim
history.
The
Safavid dynastySafavid dynasty had its origin in the
SafaviyyaSafaviyya Sufi order, which
was established in the city of
ArdabilArdabil in the
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan region. It
was of mixed ancestry (Kurdish[32] and Azerbaijani,[33] which included
intermarriages with Georgian,[34] Circassian,[35][36] and Pontic
Greek[37] dignitaries). From their base in Ardabil, the Safavids
established control over parts of Greater
IranIran and reasserted the
Iranian identity of the region,[38] thus becoming the first native
dynasty since the Sasanian
EmpireEmpire to establish a unified Iranian
state.[39]
The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1722 (experiencing a brief restoration
from 1729 to 1736) and, at their height, they controlled all of modern
Iran, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Armenia, eastern Georgia, parts of the
North Caucasus, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, as well as parts of
Turkey, Syria, Pakistan,
TurkmenistanTurkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Despite their demise in 1736, the legacy that they left behind was the
revival of
PersiaPersia as an economic stronghold between East and West, the
establishment of an efficient state and bureaucracy based upon "checks
and balances", their architectural innovations and their patronage for
fine arts. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present
era by spreading
Shi'a IslamShi'a Islam in Iran, as well as major parts of the
Caucasus, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia.

Contents

1 Genealogy—ancestors of the Safavids and its multi-cultural
identity
2 Background—The Safavid Sufi Order
3 History

3.1 Founding of the dynasty by Shāh Ismāil I (r. 1501–24)

3.1.1
PersiaPersia prior to Ismāil's rule
3.1.2 Rise of Shāh Ismāil I
3.1.3 Start of clashes with the Ottomans

3.4.1 Restoration of central authority
3.4.2 Recovery of territory from the
UzbeksUzbeks and the Ottomans
3.4.3 Quelling the Georgian uprising
3.4.4 Suppressing the Kurdish rebellion
3.4.5 Contacts with Europe during Abbas's reign
3.4.6 Succession and legacy of Abbas I

Genealogy—ancestors of the Safavids and its multi-cultural identity
See also:
Safavid dynastySafavid dynasty family tree, Safaviyya, Safvat as-safa,
Silsilat-al-nasab-i Safaviya, Firuz
ShahShah Zarin-Kolah, and List of the
mothers of the Safavid Shahs
The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds,[40] family
descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, although many scholars
have cast doubt on this claim.[41] There seems now to be a consensus
among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian
Kurdistan,[31] and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the
11th century CE at Ardabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts
trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, Firuz Shah
Zarin-Kulah.[32][42]
According to some historians,[43][44] including Richard Frye, the
Safavids were of Turkicized Iranian origin:[33]

The Turkish speakers of
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan are mainly descended from the
earlier Iranian speakers, several pockets of whom still exist in the
region. A massive migration of
Oghuz TurksOghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th
centuries not only Turkified
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan but also Anatolia. The Azeri
Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty.

Other historians, such as Vladimir Minorsky[45] and Roger Savory,
support this idea:[46]

From the evidence available at the present time, it is certain that
the Safavid family was of indigenous Iranian stock, and not of Turkish
ancestry as it is sometimes claimed. It is probable that the family
originated in Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, where
they adopted the Azari form of Turkish spoken there, and eventually
settled in the small town of
ArdabilArdabil sometimes during the eleventh
century.

By the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of
the family were native Turkish-speaking and Turkicized,[18][47] and
some of the Shahs composed poems in their native Turkish language.
Concurrently, the Shahs themselves also supported Persian literature,
poetry and art projects including the grand
ShahnamehShahnameh of Shah
Tahmasp,[48][49] while members of the family and some Shahs composed
Persian poetry as well.[50][51] The authority of the Safavids was
religiously based, and their claim to legitimacy was founded on being
direct male descendants of the Ali,[52] the cousin and son-in-law of
Muhammad, and regarded by Shi'ites as the first Imam.
Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly
intermarried with both
Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines.[53] In
addition, from the official establishment of the dynasty in 1501, the
dynasty would continue to have many intermarriages with both
Circassian as well as again Georgian dignitaries, especially with the
advent of king Tahmasp I.[35][36]
Background—The Safavid Sufi Order
Main articles: Safaviyya, Safi al-Din Ardabili, and Ideology of
Safavids
Safavid history begins with the establishment of the
SafaviyyaSafaviyya by its
eponymous founder
Safi-ad-din ArdabiliSafi-ad-din Ardabili (1252–1334). In 700/1301,
Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, a significant
Sufi order in Gilan, from his spiritual master and father-in-law Zahed
Gilani. Due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order
was later known as the Safaviyya. The Safavid order soon gained great
influence in the city of Ardabil, and Hamdullah Mustaufi noted that
most of the people of
ArdabilArdabil were followers of Safi al-Din.
Religious poetry from Safi al-Din, written in the Old Azari
language[54][55]—a now-extinct Northwestern Iranian language—and
accompanied by a paraphrase in Persian that helps its understanding,
has survived to this day and has linguistic importance.[54]
After Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the
SafaviyyaSafaviyya passed to Sadr
al-Dīn Mūsā († 794/1391–92). The order at this time was
transformed into a religious movement that conducted religious
propaganda throughout Persia,
SyriaSyria and Asia Minor, and most likely
had maintained its
SunniSunni Shafi’ite origin at that time. The
leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son
Khwādja Ali († 1429) and in turn to his son Ibrāhīm (†
1429–47).

When Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the
SafaviyyaSafaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically
changed. According to R.M. Savory, "'Sheikh Junayd was not content
with spiritual authority and he sought material power'". At that time,
the most powerful dynasty in
PersiaPersia was that of the Kara Koyunlu, the
"Black Sheep", whose ruler Jahan
ShahShah ordered Junāyd to leave Ardabil
or else he would bring destruction and ruin upon the city.[31] Junayd
sought refuge with the rival of
Kara KoyunluKara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq
Qoyunlu (White Sheep Turkomans) Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his
relationship by marrying Uzun Hassan's sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd
was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah
and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi.
Haydar married Martha 'Alamshah Begom,[37] Uzun Hassan's daughter, who
gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Martha's
mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun[56]—was a Pontic
Greek princess, the daughter of the Grand
KomnenosKomnenos John IV of
Trebizond. She had been married to Uzun Hassan[57] in exchange for
protection of the Grand
KomnenosKomnenos from the Ottomans.
After Uzun Hassan's death, his son Ya'qub felt threatened by the
growing Safavid religious influence. Ya'qub allied himself with the
ShirvanshahShirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the
SafaviyyaSafaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from
Asia MinorAsia Minor and
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan and were known as
QizilbashQizilbash "Red Heads" because of their
distinct red headgear. The
QizilbashQizilbash were warriors, spiritual
followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and
political power.
After the death of Haydar, the
SafaviyyaSafaviyya gathered around his son Ali
Mirza Safavi, who was also pursued and subsequently killed by Ya'qub.
According to official Safavid history, before passing away, Ali had
designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the
Safaviyya.[31]
History
Founding of the dynasty by Shāh Ismāil I (r. 1501–24)
Main article: Ismail I

Ismail declares himself "Shah" by entering Tabriz; his troops in front
of Arg of Tabriz, painter Chingiz Mehbaliyev, in private collection.

PersiaPersia prior to Ismāil's rule
After the decline of the Timurid
EmpireEmpire (1370–1506),
PersiaPersia was
politically splintered, giving rise to a number of religious
movements. The demise of Tamerlane's political authority created a
space in which several religious communities, particularly Shi’i
ones, could come to the fore and gain prominence. Among these were a
number of Sufi brotherhoods, the Hurufis, Nuqtawis and Musha‘sha‘.
Of these various movements, the Safavid
QizilbashQizilbash was the most
politically resilient, and due to its success
ShahShah Isma’il I gained
political prominence in 1501.[58] There were many local states prior
to the Iranian state established by Ismāil.[59] The most important
local rulers about 1500 were:

Ismail's battle with Uzbek warlord
MuhammadMuhammad Shaybani Khan in 1510, on
a folio from the Kebir Musaver Silsilname. After the battle Ismail
purportedly gilded the skull of Shaybani Khan for use as a wine
goblet.

The
Safavid dynastySafavid dynasty was founded about 1501 by Shāh Ismāil I.[60] His
background is disputed: the language he used is not identical with
that of his "race" or "nationality" and he was bilingual from
birth.[61] Ismāil was of mixed Azeri, Kurdish, and Pontic Greek
descent, although others argue that he had no Azeri ancestry[61] and
was a direct descendant of Kurdish mystic Sheikh Safi al-Din. As such,
he was the last in the line of hereditary Grand Masters of the
Safaviyeh order, prior to its ascent to a ruling dynasty. Ismāil was
known as a brave and charismatic youth, zealous with regards to his
Shi’aShi’a faith, and believed himself to be of divine
descent—practically worshipped by his
QizilbashQizilbash followers.
In 1500, Ismāil invaded neighboring
ShirvanShirvan to avenge the death of
his father, Sheik Haydar, who had been murdered in 1488 by the ruling
Shirvanshah, Farrukh Yassar. Afterwards, Ismail went on a conquest
campaign, capturing
TabrizTabriz in July 1501, where he enthroned himself
the Shāh of Azerbaijan,[62][63][64] proclaimed himself Shahanshah of
Iran[65][66][67] and minted coins in his name, proclaiming Shi’ism
the official religion of his domain.[31] The establishment of
Shi’ism as the state religion led to various Sufi orders openly
declaring their Shi’i position, and others to promptly assume
Shi’ism. Among these, the founder of one of the most successful Sufi
orders, Ni’matullah (d. 1431), traced his descent from the Ismaili
ImamImamMuhammadMuhammad b. Ismail, as evidenced in a poem as well as another
unpublished literary composition. Though Nimatullah was apparently
Sunni, the Ni’matullahi order soon declared his order to be Shi’i
after the rise of the Safavid dynasty.[68]
Although
Ismail IIsmail I initially gained mastery over
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan alone, the
Safavids ultimately won the struggle for power over all of Persia,
which had been going on for nearly a century between various dynasties
and political forces. A year after his victory in Tabriz, Ismāil
claimed most of
PersiaPersia as part of his territory,[31] and within 10
years established a complete control over all of it. Ismail followed
the line of Iranian and Turkmen rulers prior to his assumption of the
title "Padishah-i-Iran", previously held by Uzun Hasan and many other
Iranian kings.[69] The Ottoman sultans addressed him as the king of
Persian lands and the heir to
JamshidJamshid and Kai Khosrow.[70]
Having started with just the possession of Azerbaijan, Shirvan,
southern
DagestanDagestan (with its important city of Derbent), and
ArmeniaArmenia in
1501,[71]
ErzincanErzincan and
ErzurumErzurum fell into his power in 1502,[72]
HamadanHamadan in 1503, Shiraz and
KermanKerman in 1504, Diyarbakir, Najaf, and
KarbalaKarbala in 1507, Van in 1508,
BaghdadBaghdad in 1509, and Herat, as well as
other parts of Khorasan, in 1510. In 1503, the kingdoms of
KartliKartli and
Kakheti were made his vassals as well.[73] By 1511, the
UzbeksUzbeks in the
north-east, led by their Khan
MuhammadMuhammad Shaybāni, were driven far to
the north, across the
OxusOxus River, where they continued to attack the
Safavids. Ismail's decisive victory over the Uzbeks, who had occupied
most of Khorasan, ensured Iran's eastern borders, and the
UzbeksUzbeks never
since expanded beyond the Hindukush. Although the
UzbeksUzbeks continued to
make occasional raids to Khorasan, the Safavid empire was able to keep
them at bay throughout its reign.
Start of clashes with the Ottomans
Main articles:
Battle of ChaldiranBattle of Chaldiran and Qizilbash

Artwork of the Battle of Chaldiran.

More problematic for the Safavids was the powerful neighboring Ottoman
Empire. The Ottomans, a
SunniSunni dynasty, considered the active
recruitment of Turkmen tribes of
AnatoliaAnatolia for the Safavid cause as a
major threat. To counter the rising Safavid power, in 1502, Sultan
Bayezid IIBayezid II forcefully deported many Shi'as from
AnatoliaAnatolia to other
parts of the Ottoman realm. In 1511, there was a widespread pro-Shia
and pro-Safavid uprising directed against the Ottoman
EmpireEmpire from
within the empire.[74] Furthermore, by the early 1510s Ismail's
expansionistic policies had pushed the Safavid borders in Asia Minor
even more westwards. The
Ottomans soon reacted with a large-scale
incursion into Eastern
AnatoliaAnatolia by Safavid ghazis under Nūr-ʿAlī
Ḵalīfa. This action coincided with the accession to the Ottoman
throne in 1512 of Sultan Selim I, Bayezid's son, and it was the casus
belli leading to Selim's decision to invade neighbouring Safavid Iran
two years later.[75] In 1514, Sultan
Selim ISelim I marched through Anatolia
and reached the plain of Chaldiran near the city of Khoy, where a
decisive battle was fought. Most sources agree that the Ottoman army
was at least double the size of that of Ismāil;[60] however, the
Ottomans had the advantage of artillery, which the Safavid army
lacked. According to R. M. Savory, "Salim's plan was to winter at
TabrizTabriz and complete the conquest of
PersiaPersia the following spring.
However, a mutiny among his officers who refused to spend the winter
at
TabrizTabriz forced him to withdraw across territory laid waste by the
Safavid forces, eight days later".[60] Although Ismāil was defeated
and his capital was captured, the Safavid empire survived. The war
between the two powers continued under Ismāil's son, Shāh Tahmāsp
I, and the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I, until Shāh Abbās retook the
area lost to the
Ottomans by 1602.

Shāh Ismāil's empire

The consequences of the defeat at Chaldiran were also psychological
for Ismāil: the defeat destroyed Ismāil's belief in his
invincibility, based on his claimed divine status.[31] His
relationships with his
QizilbashQizilbash followers were also fundamentally
altered. The tribal rivalries between the Qizilbash, which temporarily
ceased before the defeat at Chaldiran, resurfaced in intense form
immediately after the death of Ismāil, and led to ten years of civil
war (930-40/1524-33) until Shāh Tahmāsp regained control of the
affairs of the state. For most of the last decade of Ismail's reign,
the domestic affairs of the empire were overseen by the Tajik vizier
Mirza
ShahShah Husayn Isfahani until his assassination in 1523.[76] The
Chaldiran battle also holds historical significance as the start of
over 300 years of frequent and harsh warfare fuelled by geo-politics
and ideological differences between the
Ottomans and the Iranian
Safavids (as well as successive Iranian states) mainly regarding
territories in Eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Mesopotamia.
Early Safavid power in
IranIran was based on the military power of the
Qizilbash. Ismāil exploited the first element to seize power in Iran.
But eschewing politics after his defeat in Chaldiran, he left the
affairs of the government to the office of the wakīl (chief
administrator, vakīl in Turkish). Ismāil's successors, most
manifestly Shāh Abbās I, successfully diminished the influence of
the
QizilbashQizilbash on the affairs of the state.
Shāh Tahmāsp (r. 1524–76)
Main article:
ShahShah Tahmasp
Civil Strife during Tahmāsp's Early Reign

Shāh Tahmāsp, the young titular governor of Khorasan,[77] succeeded
his father Ismāil in 1524, when he was ten years and three months
old. The succession was evidently undisputed.[76] Tahmāsp was the
ward of the powerful
QizilbashQizilbash amir Ali Beg Rūmlū (titled "Div
Soltān Rumlu") who saw himself as the de facto ruler of the state.
Rūmlū and Kopek Sultān Ustajlu (who had been Ismail's last wakīl)
established themselves as co-regents of the young shah.[76] The
Qizilbash, which still suffered under the legacy of the battle of
Chaldiran, was engulfed in internal rivalries. The first two years of
Tahmāsp's reign was consumed with Div Sultān’s efforts to
eliminate Ustajlu from power.[76] This court intrigue lead directly to
tribal conflict. Beginning in 1526 periodic battles broke out,
beginning in northwest
PersiaPersia but soon involving all of Khorasan.[78]
In the absence of a charismatic, messianic rallying figure like the
young Ismail, the tribal leaders reclaimed their traditional
prerogative and threatened to return to the time of local warlords.
For nearly 10 years rival
QizilbashQizilbash factions fought each other. Af
first, Kopek Sultān's Ustajlu tribe suffered the heaviest, and he
himself was killed in a battle.
Thus Div Soltān emerged victorious in the first palace struggle, bit
he fell victim to Chuha Sultān of the Takkalu, who turned Tahmāsp
against his first mentor. In 1527 Tahmāsp demonstrated his desire by
shooting an arrow at Div Soltān before the assembled court. The
Takkalu replaced the Rumlu as the dominant tribe. They in turn would
be replaced by the Shamlu, whose amir, Husain Khan, became the chief
adviser. This latest leader would only last until 1534, when he was
deposed and executed.[79]
At the downfall of Husain Khan, Tahmāsp asserted his rule. Rather
than rely on another Turkmen tribe, he appointed a Persian wakīl.
From 1553 for forty years the shah was able to avoid being ensnared in
tribal treacheries. But the decade of civil war had exposed the empire
to foreign danger and Tahmāsp had to turn his attention to the
repeated raids by the Uzbeks.[80]
Foreign Threats to the Empire
Main articles:
Ottoman-Safavid War (1532-1555)Ottoman-Safavid War (1532-1555) and Peace of Amasya
The Uzbeks, during the reign of Tahmāsp, attacked the eastern
provinces of the kingdom five times, and the
Ottomans under Soleymān
I invaded
PersiaPersia four times.[81] Decentralized control over Uzbek
forces was largely responsible for the inability of the
UzbeksUzbeks to make
territorial inroads into Khorasan.[82] Putting aside internal
dissension, the Safavid nobles responded to a threat to
HeratHerat in 1528
by riding eastward with Tahmāsp (then 17) and soundly defeating the
numerically superior forces of the
UzbeksUzbeks at Jām.[83] The victory
resulted at least in part from Safavid use of firearms, which they had
been acquiring and drilling with since Chaldiran.[84]
Notwithstanding the success with firearms at Jām, Tahmāsp still
lacked the confidence to engage their archrivals the Ottomans,
choosing instead to cede territory, often using scorched earth tactics
in the process.[85] The goal of the
Ottomans in the 1534 and 1548-1549
campaigns, during the 1532-1555 Ottoman-Safavid War, was to install
Tahmāsp's brothers (Sam Mirza and Alqas Mirza, respectively) as shah
in order to make
PersiaPersia a vassal state. Although in those campaigns
(and in 1554) the
Ottomans captured Tabriz, they lacked a
communications line sufficient to occupy it for long.[86]
Nevertheless, given the insecurity in
IraqIraq and its northwest
territory, Tahmāsp moved his court from
TabrizTabriz to Qazvin.
In the gravest crisis of Tahmāsp's reign, Ottoman forces in 1553-54
captured Yerevan,
KarabakhKarabakh and Nakhjuwan, destroyed palaces, villas
and gardens, and threatened Ardabil. During these operations an agent
of the Samlu (now supporting Sam Mizra's pretentions) attempted to
poison the shah. Tahmāsp resolved to end hostilities and sent his
ambassador to Soleymān's winter quarters in
ErzurumErzurum in September 1554
to sue for peace.[87] Temporary terms were followed by the Peace of
Amasya in June 1555, ending the war with the
Ottomans for the next two
decades. The treaty was the first formal diplomatic recognition of the
Safavid
EmpireEmpire by the Ottomans.[88] Under the Peace, the Ottomans
agreed to restore Yerevan,
KarabakhKarabakh and Nakhjuwan to the Safavids and
in turn would retain
MesopotamiaMesopotamia (Iraq) and eastern Anatolia.
Soleymān agreed to permit Safavid
Shi’aShi’a pilgrims to make
pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina as well as tombs of imams in
IraqIraq and
Arabia on condition that the shah would abolish the taburru, the
cursing of the first three Rashidun caliphs.[89] It was a heavy price
in terms of territory and prestige lost, but it allowed the empire to
last, something that seemed improbable during the first years of
Tahmāsp's reign.
Royal refugees: Bayezid and Humayun

Almost simultaneously with the emergence of the Safavid Empire, the
Mughal Empire, founded by the Timurid heir Babur, was developing in
South-Asia. The Mughals adhered (for the most part) to a tolerant
SunniSunni Islam while ruling a largely
HinduHindu population. After the death
of Babur, his son
HumayunHumayun was ousted from his territories and
threatened by his half-brother and rival, who had inherited the
northern part of Babur's territories.[90] Having to flee from city to
city,
HumayunHumayun eventually sought refuge at the court of Tahmāsp in
QazvinQazvin in 1543. Tahmāsp received
HumayunHumayun as the true emperor of the
Mughal dynasty, despite the fact that
HumayunHumayun had been living in exile
for more than fifteen years.[90][91] After
HumayunHumayun converted to Shia
Islam (under extreme duress),[90] Tahmāsp offered him military
assistance to regain his territories in return for Kandahar, which
controlled the overland trade route between central
PersiaPersia and the
Ganges. In 1545 a combined Persian-Mughal force managed to seize
KandaharKandahar and occupy Kabul.[92]
HumayunHumayun handed over Kandahar, but
Tahmāsp was forced to retake it in 1558, after
HumayunHumayun seized it on
the death of the Safavid governor.
HumayunHumayun was not the only royal figure to seek refuge at Tahmasp's
court. A dispute arose in the Ottoman
EmpireEmpire over who was to succeed
the aged Suleiman the Magnificent. Suleiman's favourite wife, Hürrem
Sultan, was eager for her son, Selim, to become the next sultan. But
Selim was an alcoholic and Hürrem's other son, Bayezid, had shown far
greater military ability. The two princes quarrelled and eventually
Bayezid rebelled against his father. His letter of remorse never
reached Suleiman, and he was forced to flee abroad to avoid execution.
In 1559 Bayezid arrived in
IranIran where Tahmasp gave him a warm welcome.
Suleiman was eager to negotiate his son's return, but Tahmasp rejected
his promises and threats until, in 1561, Suleiman compromised with
him. In September of that year, Tahmasp and Bayezid were enjoying a
banquet at
TabrizTabriz when Tahmasp suddenly pretended he had received news
that the Ottoman prince was engaged in a plot against his life. An
angry mob gathered and Tahmasp had Bayezid put into custody, alleging
it was for his own safety. Tahmasp then handed the prince over to the
Ottoman ambassador. Shortly afterwards, Bayezid was killed by agents
sent by his own father.[93]
Legacy of
ShahShah Tahmasp
When the young
ShahShah Tahmāsp took the throne,
PersiaPersia was in a dire
state. But in spite of a weak economy, a civil war and foreign wars on
two fronts, Tahmāsp managed to retain his crown and maintain the
territorial integrity of the empire (although much reduced from
Ismail's time). During the first 30 years of his long reign, he was
able to suppress the internal divisions by exerting control over a
strengthened central military force. In the war against the
UzbeksUzbeks he
showed that the Safavids had become a gunpowder empire. His tactics in
dealing with the Ottoman threat eventually allowed for a treaty which
preserved peace for twenty years.
In cultural matters, Tahmāsp presided the revival of the fine arts,
which flourished under his patronage. Safavid culture is often admired
for the large-scale city planning and architecture, achievements made
during the reign of later shahs, but the arts of persian miniature,
book-binding and calligraphy, in fact, never received as much
attention as they did during his time.[94]
Tahmāsp also planted the seeds that would, unintentionally, produce
change much later. During his reign he had realized while both looking
to his own empire and that of the neighboring Ottomans, that there
were dangerous rivalling factions and internal family rivalries that
were a threat to the heads of state. Not taken care of accordingly,
these were a serious threat to the ruler, or worse, could bring the
fall of the former or could lead to unnecessary court intrigues.
According to Encyclopedia Iranica, for Tahmāsp, the problem circled
around the military tribal elite of the empire, the Qezelbāš, who
believed that physical proximity to and control of a member of the
immediate Safavid family guaranteed spiritual advantages, political
fortune, and material advancement.[95] Despite that Tahmāsp could
nullify and neglect some of his consternations regarding potential
issues related to his family by having his close direct male relatives
such as his brothers and sons routinely transferred around to various
governorships in the empire, he understood and realized that any
long-term solutions would mainly involve minimizing the political and
military presence of the Qezelbāš as a whole. According to
Encyclopedia Iranica, his father and founder of the Empire, Ismail I,
had begun this process on a bureaucratic level as he appointed a
number of prominent Persians in powerful bureaucratic positions, and
one can see this continued in Tahmāsp’s lengthy and close
relationship with the chief vizier, Qāżi Jahān of Qazvin, after
1535.[95] While Persians continued to fill their historical role as
administrators and clerical elites under Tahmāsp, little had been
done so far to minimize the military role of the Qezelbāš.[95]
Therefore, in 1540,
ShahShah Tahmāsp started the first of a series of
invasions of the
CaucasusCaucasus region, both meant as a training and
drilling for his soldiers, as well as mainly bringing back massive
numbers of Christian Circassian and Georgian slaves, who would form
the basis of a military slave system,[96] alike to the janissaries of
the neighbouring Ottoman Empire,[97] as well as at the same time
forming a new layer in Iranian society composed of ethnic Caucasians.
At the fourth invasion in 1553, it was now clear that Tahmāsp
followed a policy of annexation and resettlement as he gained control
over
TbilisiTbilisi (Tiflis) and the region of
KartliKartli while physically
transplanting more than 30,000 people to the central Iranian
heartlands.[95] According to Encyclopedia Iranica, this would be the
starting point for the corps of the ḡolāmān-e ḵāṣṣa-ye-e
šarifa, or royal slaves, who would dominate the Safavid military for
most of the empire's length. As non-Turcoman converts to Islam, these
Circassian and Georgian ḡolāmāns (also written as ghulams) were
completely unrestrained by clan loyalties and kinship obligations,
which was an attractive feature for a ruler like Tahmāsp whose
childhood and upbringing had been deeply affected by Qezelbāš tribal
politics.[95] In turn, many of these transplanted women became wives
and concubines of Tahmāsp, and the Safavid harem emerged as a
competitive, and sometimes lethal, arena of ethnic politics as cliques
of Turkmen, Circassian, and Georgian women and courtiers vied with
each other for the shah’s attention.[95]
Although the first slave soldiers would not be organized until the
reign of Abbas I, during Tahmāsp's time Caucasians would already
become important members of the royal household,
HaremHarem and in the
civil and military administration,[98][99] and by that becoming their
way of eventually becoming an integral part of the society. One of
Tahmāsp's sisters married a Circassian, who would use his court
office to team up with Tahmāsp's daughter,
Pari Khān KhānumPari Khān Khānum to
assert themselves in succession matters after Tahmāsp's death.
After the Peace of Amasya, Tasmāsp underwent what he called a
"sincere repentance." Tasmāsp at the same time removed his son Ismail
from his
QizilbashQizilbash followers and imprisoned him at Qahqaha. Moreover,
he began to strengthen Shia practice by such things as forbidding in
the new capital of
QazvinQazvin poetry and music which did not esteem Ali
and the Twelve Imams. He also reduced the taxes of districts that were
traditionally Shia, regulated services in mosques and engaged Shia
propagandists and spies. Extortion, intimidation and harassment were
practiced against Sunnis.[100]
When Tahmāsp died in 984/1576,
PersiaPersia was calm domestically, with
secure borders and no imminent threat from either the
UzbeksUzbeks or the
Ottomans. What remained unchanged, however, was the constant threat of
local disaffection with the weak central authority. That condition
would not change (and in fact it would worsen) until Tahmāsp's
grandson, Abbas I, assumed the throne.
Chaos under Tahmasp’s sons
On Tahmāsp’s death support for a successor coalesced around two of
his nine sons; the support divided on ethnic lines—Ismail was
supported by most of the Turkmen tribes as well as his sister Pari
Khān Khānum, her Circassian uncle
Shamkhal Sultan as well as the
rest of the Circassians, while Haydar was mostly supported by the
GeorgiansGeorgians at court although he also had support from the Turkmen
Ustajlu.[101] Ismail had been imprisoned at Qahqaha since 1556 by his
father on charges of plotting a coup, but his selection was ensured
when 30,000
QizilbashQizilbash supporters demonstrated outside the prison.[102]
Shortly after the installation of
Ismail IIIsmail II on August 22, 1576, Haydar
was beheaded.
Ismail IIIsmail II (r. 1576–77)
Main article: Ismail II
Ismail’s 14-month reign was notable for two things: continual
bloodletting of his relatives and others (including his own
supporters) and his reversal on religion. He had all his relatives
killed except for his older brother, Mohammad Khudabanda, who, being
nearly blind, was not a real candidate for the throne, and
Mohammad’s three sons, Hamza Mirza, Abbas Mirza and Abu Talib
Mirza.[103] While the murderous actions of Ismail might be explained
by political prudence (Ottoman sultans occasionally purged the
bloodline to prevent succession rivals[104]), his actions against
Shi’aShi’a suggest retaliation against his father, who saw himself as a
pious practitioner. Ismail sought to reintroduce
SunniSunni orthodoxy. But
even here there may have been practical political considerations;
namely, “concern about the excessively powerful position of Shi‘i
dignitaries, which would have been undermined by a reintroduction of
the Sunna.”[105] His conduct might also be explained by his drug
use. In any event, he was ultimately killed (according to some
accounts) by his Circassian half-sister, Pari Khān Khānum, who
championed him over Haydar. She is said to have poisoned his
opium.[106]
Mohammad KhodabandaMohammad Khodabanda (r. 1578–87)
Main article: Mohammad Khodabanda

On the death of
Ismail IIIsmail II there were three candidates for succession:
Shāh Shujā', the infant son of Ismail (only a few weeks old),
Ismail's brother, Mohammad Khodabanda; and Mohammad’s son, Sultan
Hamza Mirza, 11 years old at the time. Pari Khān Khānum, sister of
Ismail and Mohammad, hoped to act as regent for any of the three
(including her older brother, who was nearly blind). Mohammad was
selected and received the crown on February 11, 1579.[107] Muhammad
would rule for 10 years, and his sister at first dominated the court,
but she fell in the first of many intrigues which continued even
though the
UzbeksUzbeks and
Ottomans again used the opportunity to threaten
Safavid territory.
Mohammad allowed others to direct the affairs of state, but none of
them had either the prestige, skill or ruthlessness of either Tahmāsp
or
Ismail IIIsmail II to rein in the ethnic or palace factions, and each of his
rulers met grim ends. Mohammad's younger sister, who had a hand in
elevating and deposing
Ismail IIIsmail II and thus had considerable influence
among the Qizilbash, was the first. She did not last much longer than
Mohammad's installation at Qazvin, where she was murdered.[108] She
was done in by intrigues by the vizier
Mirza Salman JaberiMirza Salman Jaberi (who was a
holdover from Ismail II's reign) and Mohammad's chief wife Khayr
al-Nisa Begum, known as Mahd-i ‘Ulyā. There is some indication that
Mirza Salman was the chief conspirator.[109]
Pari Khān KhānumPari Khān Khānum could
master strong support among the Qizilbash, and her uncle, Shamkhal
Sultan, was a prominent Circassian who held a high official
position.[110] Mirza Salman left the capital before Pari Khān Khānum
closed the gates and was able to meet
Mohammad KhodabandaMohammad Khodabanda and his wife
in Shiraz, to whom he offered his services.[111] He may have believed
that he would rule once their enemy was disposed of, but Mahd-i
‘Ulyā proved the stronger of the two.

She was by no means content to exercise a more or less indirect
influence on affairs of state: instead, she openly carried out all
essential functions herself, including the appointment of the chief
officers of the realm. In place of the usual royal audience, these
high dignitaries had to assemble each morning at the entrance to the
women’s apartments in order to receive the Begum’s orders. On
these occasions the royal edicts were drawn up and sealed.[108]

The amirs demanded that she be removed, and Mahd-i Ulya was strangled
in the harem in July 1579 on the ground of an alleged affair with the
brother of the Crimean khan, Adil Giray,[108] who was captured during
the 1578-1590 Ottoman war and held captive in the capital,
Qazvin.[112] None of the perpetrators were brought to justice,
although the shah lectured the assembled amirs on how they departed
from the old ways when the shah was master to his Sufi disciples. The
shah used that occasion to proclaim the 11-year-old Sultan Hamza Mirza
(Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's favorite) crown-prince.[113]
The palace intrigues reflected ethnic unrest which would soon erupt
into open warfare. Persia's neighbors improved upon the opportunity to
attack Persia. The
UzbeksUzbeks struck in the Spring of 1578 but were
repelled by Murtaza Quli Sultan, governor of Mashhad.[114] More
seriously the
Ottomans ended the
Peace of AmasyaPeace of Amasya and commenced a war
with
PersiaPersia that would last until 1590 by invading Iran's territories
of Georgia and Shirvan. While the initial attacks were repelled, the
Ottomans continued and grabbed considerable territory in
Transcaucasia, Dagestan, Kurdistan and
LuristanLuristan and in 993/1585 they
even took Tabriz.[115]
In the midst of these foreign perils, rebellion broke out in Khorasan
fomented by (or on behalf of) Mohammad's son, Abbas. Ali Quli Khan
Shamlu, the lala of Abbas and Ismail II's man in
HeratHerat proclaimed
Abbas shah there April 1581.[116] The following year the loyal
QizilbashQizilbash forces (the Turkmen and Takkalu who controlled Qazvin), with
vizier Mirza Salman and crown prince Sultan Hamza Mirza at their head
to confront the rebelling Ustajlu-Shamlu coalition which had assumed
control of Khorasan under the nominal rule of young Abbas.[117] The
Ustajlu chief, Murshid Quli Khan, immediately acquiesced and received
a royal pardon. Shumlu leader, Ali Quli Khan, however, holed himself
inside
HeratHerat with Abbas. The vizier thought that the royal forces
failed to prosecute the siege sufficiently and accused the forces of
sedition. The loyal Qizibash recoiled at their treatment by Mirza
Salman, who they resented for a number of reasons (not least of which
was the fact that a Tajik was given military command over them), and
demanded that he be turned over to them. The crown prince (the
vizier's son-in-law) meekly turned him over, and the Qizilbash
executed him and confiscated his property.[118] The siege of Herat
thus ended in 1583 without Ali Quli Khan backing down and Khorasan was
in a state of open rebellion.
In 1585 two events occurred that would combine to break the impasse
among the Qizilbash. First, in the west, the Ottomans, seeing the
disarray of the warriors, pressed deep into Safavid territory and
occupied the old capital of Tabriz. Crown prince Hamza Mirza, now 21
years and director of Safavid affairs, led a force to confront the
Ottomans, but in 1586 was murdered under mysterious circumstances. In
the east Murshid Quli Khan, of the Ustajlu tribe, managed to snatch
Abbas away from the Shamlus. Two years later in 1587, the massive
invasion of Khorasan by the
UzbeksUzbeks proved the occasion whereby Murshid
Quli Khan would make a play for supremacy in Qazvin. When he reached
the capital with Abbas a public demonstration in the boy's favor
decided the issue, and
ShahShah Mohammad voluntarily handed over the
insignia of kingship to his son, who was crowned Abbas I on October 1,
1588. The moment was grave for the empire, with the
Ottomans deep in
Persian territory in the west and north and the
UzbeksUzbeks in possession
of half of Khorasan in the east.[119]
ShahShah Abbas (r. 1588–1629)
Main article: Abbas I of Persia

The 16-year-old Abbas I was installed as nominal shah in 1588, but the
real power was intended to remain in the hands of his "mentor,"
Murshid Quli Khan, who reorganized court offices and principal
governorships among the Qizilbash[120] and took the title of wakīl
for himself.[121] Abbas' own position seemed even more dependent on
QizilbashQizilbash approval than even Mohammad Khodabanda's was. The dependence
of Abbas on the
QizilbashQizilbash (which provided the only military force) was
further reinforced by the precarious situation of the empire, in the
vice of Ottoman and Uzbek territorial plunder. Yet over the course of
ten years Abbas was able, using cautiously-timed but nonetheless
decisive steps, to affect a profound transformation of Safavid
administration and military, throw back the foreign invaders, and
preside over a flourishing of Persian art.
Restoration of central authority
Whether Abbas had fully formed his strategy at the onset, at least in
retrospect his method of restoring the shah's authority involved three
phases: (1) restoration of internal security and law and order; (2)
recovery of the eastern territories from the Uzbek's; and (3) recovery
of the western territories from the Ottomans.[122] Before he could
begin to embark on the first stage, he needed relief from the most
serious threat to the empire: the military pressure from the Ottomans.
He did so by taking the humiliating step of coming to peace terms with
the
Ottomans by making, for now, permanent their territorial gains in
IraqIraq and the territories in the north, including Azerbaijan, Qarabagh,
Ganja, eastern Georgia (comprising the
Kingdom of KartliKingdom of Kartli and Kakheti),
Dagestan, and Kurdistan.[123][124] At the same time, he took steps to
ensure that the
QizilbashQizilbash did not mistake this apparent show of
weakness as a signal for more tribal rivalry at the court. Although no
one could have bristled more at the power grab of his "mentor" Murshid
Quli Khan, he rounded up the leaders of a plot to assassinate the
wakīl and had them executed. Then, having made the point that he
would not encourage rivalries even purporting to favor his interests,
he felt secure enough to have Murshid Quli Khan assassinated on his
own orders in July 1589.[125] It was clear that the style of
leadership would be entirely different than Mohammad Khodabanda's
leadership.

Safavid Persia, 1598

Abbas was able to begin gradually transforming the empire from a
tribal confederation to a modern imperial government by transferring
provinces from mamalik (provincial) rule governed by a
QizilbashQizilbash chief
and the revenue of which mostly supported local Qizilbash
administration and forces to khass (central) rule presided over by a
court appointee and the revenue of which reverted to the court.
Particularly important in this regard were the Gilan and Mazandaran
provinces, which produced Persia's single most important export; silk.
With the substantial new revenue, Abbas was able to build up a
central, standing army, loyal only to him. This freed him of his
dependence on
QizilbashQizilbash warriors loyal to local tribal chiefs.[126]

Safavid Persia, 1610

What effectively fully severed Abbas's dependence on the Qizilbash,
however, was how he constituted this new army. In order not to favor
one Turkic tribe over another and to avoid inflaming the Turk-Persian
enmity, he recruited his army from the "third force", a policy that
had been implemented in its baby-steps since the reign of Tahmasp
I—the Circassian, Georgian and to a lesser extent Armenian ghulāms
(slaves) which (after conversion to Islam) were trained for the
military or some branch of the civil or military administration. The
standing army created by Abbas consisted of: (1) 10,000-15,000 cavalry
ghulām regiments solely composed of ethnic Caucasians, armed with
muskets in addition to the usual weapons (then the largest cavalry in
the world[127]); (2) a corps of musketeers, tufangchiyān, mainly
Iranians, originally foot soldiers but eventually mounted, and (3) a
corps of artillerymen, tūpchiyān. Both corps of musketeers and
artillerymen totaled 12,000 men. In addition the shah's personal
bodyguard, made up exclusively of Caucasian ghulāms, was dramatically
increased to 3,000.[128] This force of well-trained Caucasian ghulams
under Abbas amounted to a total of near 40,000 soldiers paid for and
beholden to the Shah.[129][130]
Abbas also greatly increased the number of cannons at his disposal,
permitting him to field 500 in a single battle.[130] Ruthless
discipline was enforced and looting was severely punished. Abbas was
also able to draw on military advice from a number of European envoys,
particularly from the English adventurers Sir
Anthony ShirleyAnthony Shirley and his
brother Robert Shirley, who arrived in 1598 as envoys from the Earl of
Essex on an unofficial mission to induce
PersiaPersia into an anti-Ottoman
alliance.[131] As mentioned by the Encyclopaedia Iranica, lastly, from
1600 onwards, the Safavid statesman Allāhverdī Khan, in conjunction
with Robert Sherley, undertook further reorganizations of the army,
which meant among other things further dramatically increasing the
number of ghulams to 25,000.[132]
Abbas also moved the capital to Isfahan, deeper into central Iran.
Abbas I built a new city next to the ancient Persian one. From this
time the state began to take on a more Persian character. The Safavids
ultimately succeeded in establishing a new Persian national monarchy.
Recovery of territory from the
UzbeksUzbeks and the Ottomans
See also: Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–18)

Abbas I as shown on one of the paintings in the Chehel Sotoun
pavilion.

Abbas I first fought the Uzbeks, recapturing
HeratHerat and Mashhad in
1598. Then he turned against Persia's archrival, the Ottomans,
recapturing Baghdad, eastern
IraqIraq and the Caucasian provinces by 1616,
all through the 1603-1618, marking the first grand Safavid pitched
victory over the Ottomans. He also used his new force to dislodge the
Portuguese from
BahrainBahrain (1602) and, with English help, from Hormuz
(1622), in the
Persian GulfPersian Gulf (a vital link in Portuguese trade with
India). He expanded commercial links with the English East India
Company and the Dutch East India Company. Thus Abbas was able to break
the dependence on the
QizilbashQizilbash for military might indefinitely and
therefore was able to centralize control, for the first time since
fully the foundation of the Safavid state.
The
Ottoman Turks and Safavids fought over the fertile plains of Iraq
for more than 150 years. The capture of
BaghdadBaghdad by
Ismail IIsmail I in 1509
was only followed by its loss to the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I in
1534. After subsequent campaigns, the Safavids recaptured
BaghdadBaghdad in
1623 during the
Ottoman–Safavid War (1623–39)Ottoman–Safavid War (1623–39) yet lost it again to
Murad IVMurad IV in 1638 after Abbas had died. Henceforth a treaty, signed in
Qasr-e ShirinQasr-e Shirin known as the
Treaty of Zuhab was established delineating
a border between
IranIran and
TurkeyTurkey in 1639, a border which still stands
in northwest Iran/southeast Turkey. The 150-year tug-of-war
accentuated the
SunniSunni and Shi'a rift in Iraq.
Quelling the Georgian uprising
See also: Capture of
TbilisiTbilisi and Gökçe war

Rostom (also known as Rustam Khan), viceroy of Kartli, eastern
Georgia, from 1633-1658.

In 1614–16 during the Ottoman-Safavid War (1603-1618), Abbas
suppressed a rebellion led by his formerly most loyal Georgian
subjects Luarsab II and Teimuraz I (also known as Tahmuras Khan) in
the Kingdom of Kakheti. In 1613, Abbas had appointed these trusted
Georgian gholams of his on the puppet thrones of
KartliKartli and Kakheti,
the Iranian Safavid ruled areas of Georgia. Later that year, when the
shah summoned them to join him on a hunting expedition in Mazandaran,
they didn't show up due to the fear they would be either imprisoned or
killed.[133] Ultimately forming an alliance, the two sought refuge
with the Ottoman forces in Ottoman ruled Imereti. This defection of
two of the shah's most trusted subjects and gholams infuriated the
shah, as reported by the Safavid court historian Iskander Beg
Munshi.[133]
The following spring in 1614, Abbas I appointed a grandson of
Alexander II of ImeretiAlexander II of Imereti to the throne of Kartli,
Jesse of Kakheti also
known as "Isā Khān".[133] Raised at the court in
IsfahanIsfahan and a
Muslim, he was fully loyal to the shah. Subsequently, the shah marched
upon Grem, the capital of Imereti, and punished its peoples for
harbouring his defected subjects. He returned to Kartli, and in two
punitive campaigns he devastated Tblisi, killed 60–70,000 Kakheti
Georgian peasants, and deported between 130,000-200,000 Georgian
captives to mainland Iran.[134][135][136][137] After fully securing
the region, he executed the rebellious Luarsab II of
KartliKartli and later
had the Georgian queen Ketevan, who had been sent to the shah as
negotiator, tortured to death when she refused to renounce
Christianity, in an act of revenge for the recalcitrance of
Teimuraz.[138][139] Kakheti lost two-thirds of its population in these
years by Abbas' punitive campaign. The majority were deported to Iran,
while some were slaughtered.[140]
Teimuraz returned to eastern Georgia in 1615 and defeated a Safavid
force. It was just a brief setback, however, as Abbas had already been
making long-term plans to prevent further incursions. He was
eventually successful in making the eastern Georgian territories an
integral part of the Safavid provinces. In 1619 he appointed the loyal
Simon II (or Semayun Khan) on the symbolic throne of Kakheti, while
placing a series of his own governors to rule of districts where
rebellious inhabitants were mostly located.[133] Moreover, he planned
to deport all nobles of Kartli. Iranian rule had been fully restored
over eastern Georgia, but the Georgian territories would continue to
produce resistance to Safavid enroachments from 1624 until Abbas'
death.[141]
Suppressing the Kurdish rebellion
In 1609–10, a war broke out between Kurdish tribes and the Safavid
Empire. After a long and bloody siege led by the Safavid grand vizier
Hatem Beg, which lasted from November 1609 to the summer of 1610, the
Kurdish stronghold of Dimdim was captured.
ShahShah Abbas ordered a
general massacre in Beradost and Mukriyan (Mahabad, reported by
Eskandar Beg Monshi, Safavid Historian (1557–1642), in "Alam Ara
Abbasi") and resettled the Turkic
Afshar tribe in the region while
deporting many Kurdish tribes to Khorasan.[142][143] Nowadays, there
is a community of nearly 1.7 million people who are descendants of the
tribes deported from Kurdistan to Khorasan (Northeastern Iran) by the
Safavids.[144]
Contacts with Europe during Abbas's reign

The ambassador Husain Ali Beg led the first Persian embassy to Europe
(1599–1602).

Abbas's tolerance towards Christians was part of his policy of
establishing diplomatic links with European powers to try to enlist
their help in the fight against their common enemy, the Ottoman
Empire. The idea of such an anti-Ottoman alliance was not a new
one—over a century before, Uzun Hassan, then ruler of part of Iran,
had asked the Venetians for military aid—but none of the Safavids
had made diplomatic overtures to Europe.
ShahShahIsmail IIsmail I was the first
of the Safavids to try to establish once again an alliance against the
common Ottoman enemy through the earlier stages of the
Habsburg–Persian alliance, but this also proved to be largely
unfruitful during his reign.[145] Abbas's attitude, however, was in
marked contrast to that of his grandfather, Tahmasp I, who had
expelled the English traveller
Anthony JenkinsonAnthony Jenkinson from his court on
hearing he was a Christian.[146] For his part, Abbas declared that he
"preferred the dust from the shoe soles of the lowest Christian to the
highest Ottoman personage."[147] Abbas would take active and all
measures needed in order to get the alliances done.

In 1599, Abbas sent his first diplomatic mission to Europe. The group
crossed the
Caspian SeaCaspian Sea and spent the winter in Moscow before
proceeding through Norway and Germany (where it was received by
Emperor Rudolf II) to Rome, where
Pope Clement VIIIPope Clement VIII gave the
travellers a long audience. They finally arrived at the court of
Philip III of SpainPhilip III of Spain in 1602. Although the expedition never managed to
return to Iran, being shipwrecked on the journey around Africa, it
marked an important new step in contacts between
IranIran and Europe. The
Europeans began to be fascinated by the Iranians and their culture —
Shakespeare's
Twelfth NightTwelfth Night (1601–02), for example, makes two
references (at II.5 and III.4) to 'the Sophy', then the English term
for the Shahs of Iran.[148][149] Henceforward, the number of
diplomatic missions to and fro greatly increased.[150]

Abbas I as a new Caesar being honoured by the Trumpets of Fame,
together with the 1609-1615 Persian embassy, in Allégorie de
l'Occasion, by Frans II Francken, 1628

The shah had set great store on an alliance with Spain, the chief
opponent of the
Ottomans in Europe. Abbas offered trading rights and
the chance to preach
ChristianityChristianity in
IranIran in return for help against
the Ottomans. But the stumbling block of Hormuz remained, a vassal
kingdom that had fallen into the hands of the
Spanish HabsburgsSpanish Habsburgs when
the King of Spain inherited the throne of Portugal in 1580. The
Spanish demanded Abbas break off relations with the English before
they would consider relinquishing the town. Abbas was unable to
comply. Eventually Abbas became frustrated with Spain, as he did with
the Holy Roman Empire, which wanted him to make his over 400,000
Armenian subjects swear allegiance to the Pope but did not trouble to
inform the shah when the Emperor Rudolf signed a peace treaty with the
Ottomans. Contacts with the Pope, Poland and Moscow were no more
fruitful.[151]
More came of Abbas's contacts with the English, although England had
little interest in fighting against the Ottomans. The Sherley brothers
arrived in 1598 and helped reorganize the Iranian army, which proved
to be crucial in the Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–18), which resulted
in Ottoman defeats in all stages of the war and the first clear
pitched Safavid victory of their archrivals. One of the Shirley
brothers, Robert Shirley, would lead Abbas's second diplomatic mission
to Europe from 1609-1615.[152] The English at sea, represented by the
English East India Company, also began to take an interest in Iran,
and in 1622 four of its ships helped Abbas retake Hormuz from the
Portuguese in the Capture of Ormuz (1622). This was the beginning of
the East India Company's long-running interest in Iran.[153]
Succession and legacy of Abbas I
Due to his obsessive fear of assassination,
ShahShah Abbas either put to
death or blinded any member of his family who aroused his suspicion.
His oldest son, the crown prince Mohammad Baqer Mirza, was executed
following a court intrigue in which several
CircassiansCircassians were involved,
while two others were blinded. Since two other sons had predeceased
him, the result was a personal tragedy for
ShahShah Abbas. When he died on
19 January 1629, he had no son capable of succeeding him.[154]
During the early 17th century the power of the
QizilbashQizilbash drastically
diminished, the original militia that had helped
Ismail IIsmail I capture
TabrizTabriz and that had gained many administrative powers over the
centuries. Power was shifting to the new class of Caucasian deportees
and imports, many of the hundreds of thousands ethnic Georgians,
Circassians, and Armenians. This new layer of society would continue
to play a vital role in Iranian history up to and including the fall
of the Qajar dynasty, some 300 years after Abbas' death.
At its zenith, during the long reign of
ShahShah Abbas I, the empire's
reach comprised Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Dagestan,
Kabardino-Balkaria, Bahrain, and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey.
Decline of the Safavid state
Main articles: Hotaki dynasty, Afsharid dynasty, Russo-Persian War
(1722-1723), and Treaty of Constantinople (1724)

In addition to fighting its perennial enemies, their archrival the
Ottomans and the
UzbeksUzbeks as the 17th century progressed,
IranIran had to
contend with the rise of new neighbors. Russian
MuscovyMuscovy in the
previous century had deposed two western Asian khanates of the Golden
Horde and expanded its influence into Europe, the
CaucasusCaucasus Mountains
and Central Asia.
AstrakhanAstrakhan came under Russian rule, nearing the
Safavid possessions in Dagestan. In the far eastern territories, the
Mughals of India had expanded into Khorasan (now Afghanistan) at the
expense of Iranian control, briefly taking Kandahar.

In 1659, the
Kingdom of Kakheti rose up against the Safavid Iranian
rule due to a change of policy that included the mass settling of
QizilbashQizilbash Turkic tribes in the region in order to repopulate the
province, after
ShahShah Abbas' earlier mass deportations of between
130,000[155] - 200,000[135][136][156] Georgian subjects to Iran's
mainland and massacre of another thousand in 1616 virtually left the
province without any even remotely substantial amount of population.
This
Bakhtrioni UprisingBakhtrioni Uprising was successfully defeated under personal
direction of
ShahShah Abbas II himself. However, strategically it remained
inconclusive.[157] The Iranian authority was restored in Kakheti, but
the
QizilbashQizilbash Turkics were prevented from settling in Kakheti, which
undermined the planned Iranian policies in the respective province.
More importantly, the Dutch East India company and later
English/British used their superior means of maritime power to control
trade routes in the western Indian Ocean. As a result,
IranIran was cut
off from overseas links to East Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and
South Asia.[158] Overland trade grew notably however, as
IranIran was able
to further develop its overland trade with North and Central Europe
during the second half of the seventeenth century.[159] In the late
seventeenth century, Iranian merchants established a permanent
presence as far north as Narva on the Baltic sea, in what now is
Estonia.[160]
The Dutch and English were still able to drain the Iranian government
of much of its precious metal supplies. Except for
ShahShah Abbas II, the
Safavid rulers after Abbas I were therefore rendered ineffectual, and
the Iranian government declined and finally collapsed when a serious
military threat emerged on its eastern border in the early eighteenth
century.[161] The end of the reign of Abbas II, 1666, thus marked the
beginning of the end of the Safavid dynasty. Despite falling revenues
and military threats, later shahs had lavish lifestyles. Sultan Husayn
(1694–1722) in particular was known for his love of wine and
disinterest in governance.[162]

Map of the Safavid Empire, published 1736.

The country was repeatedly raided on its frontiers—
KermanKerman by Baloch
tribes in 1698, Khorasan by the Hotakis in 1717,
DagestanDagestan and northern
ShirvanShirvan by the
LezginsLezgins in 1721, constantly in
MesopotamiaMesopotamia by Sunni
peninsula Arabs. Sultan Hosein tried to forcibly convert his Afghan
subjects in Qandahar from
SunniSunni to the Shi'a sect of Islam. In
response, a
GhilzaiGhilzai Afghan chieftain named
Mir Wais HotakMir Wais Hotak revolted and
killed Gurgin Khan, the Safavid governor of the region, along with his
army. In 1722, an Afghan army led by Mir Wais' son Mahmud advanced on
the heart of the empire and defeated the government forces at the
Battle of Gulnabad. He then besieged the capital of Isfahan, until
ShahShahSultan HusaynSultan Husayn abdicated and acknowledged him as the new king of
Persia.[163][full citation needed] At the same time, the Russians led
by
Peter the GreatPeter the Great attacked and conquered swaths of Safavid Iran's
North Caucasian, Transcaucasian, and northern mainland territories
through the Russo-Persian War (1722-1723). The Safavids' archrivals,
the neighbouring Ottomans, invaded western and northwestern Safavid
IranIran and took swaths of territory there, including the city of
Baghdad. Together with the Russians, they agreed to divide and keep
the conquered Iranian territories for themselves as confirmed in the
Treaty of Constantinople (1724).[164]

A map of Safavid
EmpireEmpire in 1720, showing different states of Persia

The tribal Afghans rode roughshod over their conquered territory for
seven years but were prevented from making further gains by Nader
Shah, a former slave who had risen to military leadership within the
Afshar tribe in Khorasan, a vassal state of the Safavids. Quickly
making a name as a military genius both feared and respected amongst
its friends and enemies (including Persia's archrival the Ottoman
Empire, and Russia; both empires Nader would deal with soon
afterwards),
Nader ShahNader Shah easily defeated the
GhilzaiGhilzai Hotaki forces in
the 1729 Battle of Damghan. He had removed them from power and
banished them out of
PersiaPersia by 1729. In 1732 by the Treaty of Resht
and in 1735 Treaty of Ganja, he negotiated an agreement with the
government of Empress Anna Ioanovna for them to cede back the recently
annexed Iranian territories, making most of the
CaucasusCaucasus fall back
into Iranian hands, while establishing an Irano-Russian alliance
against the common neighbouring Ottoman enemy.[165][166] In the
Ottoman–Persian War (1730–35), he retook all territories lost by
the Ottoman invasion of the 1720s, as well as beyond. With the Safavid
state and its territories secured, in 1738 Nader conquered the
Hotaki's last stronghold in Qandahar; in the same year, in need of
fortune to aid his military careers against his Ottoman and Russian
imperial rivals, he started his invasion of the wealthy but weak
Mughal
EmpireEmpire accompanied by his Georgian subject Erekle II,[167]
occupying Ghazni, Kabul, Lahore, and as far as Delhi, in India, when
he completely humiliated and looted the militarily inferior Mughals.
These cities were later inherited by his Abdali Afghan military
commander, Ahmad
ShahShah Durrani. Nadir had effective control under Shah
Tahmasp IITahmasp II and then ruled as regent of the infant
Abbas IIIAbbas III until 1736
when he had himself crowned shah.

Immediately after Nader Shah's assassination in 1747 and the
disintegration of his short-lived empire, the Safavids were
re-appointed as shahs of
IranIran in order to lend legitimacy to the
nascent Zand dynasty. However, the brief puppet regime of Ismail III
ended in 1760 when
Karim KhanKarim Khan felt strong enough to take nominal power
of the country as well and officially end the Safavid dynasty.
Shia IslamShia Islam as the state religion
Main article: Safavid conversion of
IranIran from Sunnism to Shiism

ShahShah Suleiman I and his courtiers, Isfahan, 1670. Painter is Aliquli
Jabbadar, and is kept at The
St. PetersburgSt. Petersburg Institute of Oriental
Studies in Russia, ever since it was acquired by Tsar Nicholas II.
Note the two Georgian figures with their names at the top left.

Even though the Safavids were not the first Shia rulers in Iran, they
played a crucial role in making
Shia IslamShia Islam the official religion in
the whole of Iran, as well as what is nowadays the Republic of
Azerbaijan.[168] There were large Shia communities in some cities like
QomQom and
SabzevarSabzevar as early as the 8th century. In the 10th and 11th
centuries the Buwayhids, who were of the
ZaidiyyahZaidiyyah branch of Shia,
ruled in Fars,
IsfahanIsfahan and Baghdad. As a result of the Mongol conquest
and the relative religious tolerance of the Ilkhanids, Shia dynasties
were re-established in Iran,
SarbedaranSarbedaran in Khorasan being the most
important. The Ilkhanid ruler
ÖljaitüÖljaitü converted to
TwelverTwelver Shiism in
the 13th century.
Following his conquest of
IranIran and Azerbaijan,
Ismail IIsmail I made
conversion mandatory for the largely
SunniSunni population. The
SunniSunni Ulema
or clergy were either killed or exiled. Ismail I, brought in
mainstream Ithnā'ashariyyah Shi'a religious leaders and granted them
land and money in return for loyalty. Later, during the Safavid and
especially Qajar period, the Shia Ulema's power increased and they
were able to exercise a role, independent of or compatible with the
government.
Military and the role of Qizilbash
Main article: Qizilbash

A Safavid helmet

The
QizilbashQizilbash were a wide variety of
Shi'iteShi'ite (ghulāt) and mostly
Turcoman militant groups who helped found the Safavid Empire. Their
military power was essential during the reign of the Shahs Ismail and
Tahmasp. The
QizilbashQizilbash tribes were essential to the military of Iran
until the rule of
ShahShah Abbas I- their leaders were able to exercise
enormous influence and participate in court intrigues (assassinating
ShahShahIsmail IIIsmail II for example).
A major problem faced by
Ismail IIsmail I after the establishment of the
Safavid state was how to bridge the gap between the two major ethnic
groups in that state: the
QizilbashQizilbash ("Redhead") Turcomans, the "men of
sword" of classical Islamic society whose military prowess had brought
him to power, and the Persian elements, the "men of the pen", who
filled the ranks of the bureaucracy and the religious establishment in
the Safavid state as they had done for centuries under previous rulers
of Persia, be they Arabs, Mongols, or Turkmens. As Vladimir Minorsky
put it, friction between these two groups was inevitable, because the
QizilbashQizilbash "were no party to the national Persian tradition".
Between 1508 and 1524, the year of Ismail's death, the shah appointed
five successive Persians to the office of vakil. When the second
Persian vakil was placed in command of a Safavid army in Transoxiana,
the Qizilbash, considering it a dishonor to be obliged to serve under
him, deserted him on the battlefield with the result that he was
slain. The fourth vakil was murdered by the Qizilbash, and the fifth
was put to death by them.[60]
Reforms in the military

Persian Musketeer in time of Abbas I by Habib-Allah Mashadi after
Falsafi (Berlin Museum of Islamic Art).

ShahShah Abbas realized that in order to retain absolute control over his
empire without antagonizing the Qizilbash, he needed to create reforms
that reduced the dependency that the shah had on their military
support. Part of these reforms was the creation of the 3rd force
within the aristocracy and all other functions within the empire, but
even more important in undermining the authority of the
QizilbashQizilbash was
the introduction of the Royal Corps into the military. This military
force would serve the shah only and eventually consisted of four
separate branches:[169]

Shahsevans: these were 12,000 strong and built up from the small group
of qurchis that
ShahShah Abbas had inherited from his predecessor. The
Shahsevans, or "Friends of the King", were
QizilbashQizilbash tribesmen who had
forsaken their tribal allegiance for allegiance to the shah
alone.[170]
Ghulams:
Tahmasp ITahmasp I had started introducing huge amounts of Georgian,
Circassian and Armenian slaves and deportees from the Caucasus, of
whom a sizeable amount would become part of the future ghulam system.
ShahShah Abbas expanded this program significantly and fully implemented
it, and eventually created a force of 15,000 ghulam cavalrymen and
3,000 ghulam royal bodyguards. With the advent of the brother's
Shirley at Abbas' court and by the efforts of statesman Allahverdi
Khan, from 1600 onwards, the ghulam fighting regiments were further
dramatically expanded under Abbas reaching 25,000.[132] Under Abbas,
this force amounted to a total of near 40,000 soldiers paid for and
beholden to the Shah.[129][130][171] They would become the elite
soldiers of the Safavid armies (like the Ottoman Jannisary).[97]
Musketers: realizing the advantages that the
Ottomans had because of
their firearms,
ShahShah Abbas was at pains to equip both the qurchi and
the ghulam soldiers with up-to-date weaponry. More importantly, for
the first time in Iranian history, a substantial infantry corps of
musketeers (tofang-chis), numbering 12 000, was created.
Artillery Corps: with the help of Westerners, he also formed an
artillery corps of 12 000 men, although this was the weakest element
in his army. According to Sir Thomas Herbert, who accompanied the
British embassy to
PersiaPersia in 1628, the Persians relied heavily on
support from the Europeans in manufacturing cannons.[172] It wasn't
until a century later, when
Nader ShahNader Shah became the Commander in Chief
of the military that sufficient effort was put into modernizing the
artillery corps and the Persians managed to excel and become
self-sufficient in the manufacturing of firearms.

Despite the reforms, the
QizilbashQizilbash would remain the strongest and most
effective element within the military, accounting for more than half
of its total strength.[172] But the creation of this large standing
army, that, for the first time in Safavid history, was serving
directly under the Shah, significantly reduced their influence, and
perhaps any possibilities for the type of civil unrest that had caused
havoc during the reign of the previous shahs.
Society
A proper term for the Safavid society is what we today can call a
meritocracy, meaning a society in which officials were appointed on
the basis of worth and merit, and not on the basis of birth. It was
certainly not an oligarchy, nor was it an aristocracy. Sons of nobles
were considered for the succession of their fathers as a mark of
respect, but they had to prove themselves worthy of the position. This
system avoided an entrenched aristocracy or a cast society.[173] There
even are numerous recorded accounts of laymen that rose to high
official posts, as a result of their merits.[174]
Nevertheless, the Iranian society during the Safavids was that of a
hierarchy, with the
ShahShah at the apex of the hierarchical pyramid, the
common people, merchants and peasants at the base, and the aristocrats
in between. The term dowlat, which in modern Persian means
"government", was then an abstract term meaning "bliss" or "felicity",
and it began to be used as concrete sense of the Safavid state,
reflecting the view that the people had of their ruler, as someone
elevated above humanity.[175]
Also among the aristocracy, in the middle of the hierarchical pyramid,
were the religious officials, who, mindful of the historic role of the
religious classes as a buffer between the ruler and his subjects,
usually did their best to shield the ordinary people from oppressive
governments.[175]
The customs and culture of the people
Jean ChardinJean Chardin devoted a whole chapter in his book to describing the
Persian character, which apparently fascinated him greatly. As he
spent a large bulk of his life in Persia, he involved himself in, and
took part in, their everyday rituals and habits, and eventually
acquired intimate knowledge of their culture, customs and character.
He admired their consideration towards foreigners, but he also
stumbled upon characteristics that he found challenging. His
descriptions of the public appearance, clothes and customs are
corroborated by the miniatures, drawings and paintings from that time
which have survived. As he describes them:[176]

Their imagination is animated, quick and fruitful. Their memory is
free and prolific. They are very favorably drawn to the sciences, the
liberal and mechanical arts. Their temperament is open and leans
towards sensual pleasure and self-indulgence, which makes them pay
little attention to economy or business.

He then goes on:[176]

They are very philosophical over the good and bad things in life and
about expectations for the future. They are little tainted with
avarice, desiring only to acquire in order to spend. They love to
enjoy what is to hand and they refuse nothing which contributes to it,
having no anxiety about the future which they leave to providence and
fate.

But as he also experienced:[177]

...the Persians are dissembling, shamelessly deceitful and the
greatest flatterers in the world, using great deception and insolence.
They lack good faith in business dealings, in which they cheat so
adeptly that one is always taken in. Hypocrisy is the usual disguise
in which they proceed. They say their prayers and perform their
rituals in the most devout manner. They hold the wisest and most pious
conversation of which they are capable. And although they are
naturally inclined to humanity, hospitality, mercy and other worldly
goods, nevertheless, they do not cease feigning in order to give the
semblance of being much better than they really are.

It is however no question, from reading Chardin's descriptions of
their manners, that he considered them to be a well-educated and
well-behaved people, who certainly knew the strict etiquettes of
social intercourse. As he describes them,[178]

“
The Persians are the most civilized of the peoples of the East, and
what the French are to Europe, they are to the Orient... Their bearing
and countenance is the best-composed, mild, serious, impressive,
genial and welcoming as far as possible. They never fail to perform at
once the appropriate gestures of politeness when meeting each other...
They are the most wheedling people in the world, with the most
engaging manners, the most supple spirits and a language that is
gentle and flattering, and devoid of unpleasant terms but rather full
of circumlocutions.
”

Unlike Europeans, they much disliked physical activity, and were not
in favor of exercise for its own sake, preferring the leisure of
repose and luxuries that life could offer. Travelling was valued only
for the specific purpose of getting from one place to another, not
interesting them self in seeing new places and experiencing different
cultures. It was perhaps this sort of attitude towards the rest of the
world that accounted for the ignorance of Persians regarding other
countries of the world. The exercises that they took part in were for
keeping the body supple and sturdy and to acquire skills in handling
of arms.
ArcheryArchery took first place. Second place was held by fencing,
where the wrist had to be firm but flexible and movements agile.
Thirdly there was horsemanship. A very strenuous form of exercise
which the Persians greatly enjoyed was hunting.[179]
Entertainment

A persian miniature depicting a polo-match

Since pre-Islamic times, the sport of wrestling had been an integral
part of the Iranian identity, and the professional wrestlers, who
performed in Zurkhanehs, were considered important members of the
society. Each town had their own troop of wrestlers, called Pahlavans.
Their sport also provided the masses with entertainment and spectacle.
Chardin described one such event:[180]

“
The two wrestlers were covered in grease. They are present on the
level ground, and a small drum is always playing during the contest
for excitement. They swear to a good fight and shake hands. That done,
they slap their thighs, buttocks and hips to the rhythm of the drum.
That is for the women and to get themselves in good form. After that
they join together in uttering a great cry and trying to overthrow
each other.
”

As well as wrestling, what gathered the masses was fencing, tightrope
dancers, puppet-players and acrobats, performing in large squares,
such as the Royal square. A leisurely form of amusement was to be
found in the cabarets, particularly in certain districts, like those
near the mausoleum of Harun-e Velayat. People met there to drink
liqueurs or coffee, to smoke tobacco or opium, and to chat or listen
to poetry.[181]
Clothes and Appearances

Lady's clothing in the 1600s

Men's clothing in the 1600s

As noted before, a key aspect of the Persian character was its love of
luxury, particularly on keeping up appearances. They would adorn their
clothes, wearing stones and decorate the harness of their horses. Men
wore many rings on their fingers, almost as many as their wives. They
also placed jewels on their arms, such as on daggers and swords.
Daggers were worn at the waist. In describing the lady's clothing, he
noted that Persian dress revealed more of the figure than did the
European, but that women appeared differently depending on whether
they were at home in the presence of friends and family, or if they
were in the public. In private they usually wore a veil that only
covered the hair and the back, but upon leaving the home, they put on
manteaus, large cloaks that concealed their whole bodies except their
faces. They often dyed their feet and hands with henna. Their
hairstyle was simple, the hair gathered back in tresses, often adorned
at the ends with pearls and clusters of jewels. Women with slender
waists were regarded as more attractive than those with larger
figures. Women from the provinces and slaves pierced their left
nostrils with rings, but well-born Persian women would not do
this.[182]
The most precious accessory for men was the turban. Although they
lasted a long time it was necessary to have changes for different
occasions like weddings and the Nowruz, while men of status never wore
the same turban two days running. Clothes that became soiled in any
way were changed immediately.[183]
Turks and Tajiks
Although the Safavid rulers and citizens were of native stock and
continuously reasserted their Iranian identity, the power structure of
the Safavid state was mainly divided into two groups: the
Turkic-speaking military/ruling elite—whose job was to maintain the
territorial integrity and continuity of the Iranian empire through
their leadership—and the Persian-speaking administrative/governing
elite—whose job was to oversee the operation and development of the
nation and its identity through their high positions. Thus came the
term "Turk and Tajik", which was used by native Iranians for many
generations to describe the Persianate, or Turko-Persian, nature of
many dynasties which ruled over Greater
IranIran between the 12th and 20th
centuries, in that these dynasties promoted and helped continue the
dominant Persian linguistic and cultural identity of their states,
although the dynasties themselves were of non-Persian (e.g. Turkic)
linguistic origins. The relationship between the Turkic-speaking
'Turks' and Persian-speaking 'Tajiks' was symbiotic, yet some form of
rivalry did exist between the two. As the former represented the
"people of the sword" and the latter, "the people of the pen",
high-level official posts would naturally be reserved for the
Persians. Indeed, this had been the situation throughout Persian
history, even before the Safavids, ever since the Arab conquest.[184]
ShahShah Tahmasp introduced a change to this, when he, and the other
Safavid rulers who succeeded him, sought to blur the formerly defined
lines between the two linguistic groups, by taking the sons of
Turkic-speaking officers into the royal household for their education
in the Persian language. Consequently, they were slowly able to take
on administrative jobs in areas which had hitherto been the exclusive
preserve of the ethnic Persians.[185]
The third force: Caucasians

Daud Khan Undiladze, military commander, ghilman and the governor of
Ganja and
KarabakhKarabakh from 1625 to 1630.

See also: Iranian
GeorgiansGeorgians and Iranian Circassians
From 1540 and onwards,
ShahShah Tahmasp initiated a gradual transformation
of the Iranian society by slowly constructing a new branch and layer
solely composed of ethnic Caucasians. The implementation of this
branch would be completed and significantly widened under Abbas the
Great (Abbas I). According to the Encyclopedia Iranica, for Tahmasp,
the background of this initiation and eventual composition that would
be only finalized under
ShahShah Abbas I, circled around the military
tribal elite of the empire, the Qizilbash, who believed that physical
proximity to and control of a member of the immediate Safavid family
guaranteed spiritual advantages, political fortune, and material
advancement.[95] This was a huge impedance for the authority of the
Shah, and furthermore, it undermined any developments without the
agreeing or shared profit of the Qizilbash. As Tahmasp understood and
realized that any long-term solutions would mainly involve minimizing
the political and military presence of the
QizilbashQizilbash as a whole, it
would require them to be replaced by a whole new layer in society,
that would question and battle the authority of the
QizilbashQizilbash on every
possible level, and minimize any of their influences. This layer would
be solely composed of hundreds of thousands of deported, imported, and
to a lesser extent voluntarily migrated ethnic Circassians, Georgians,
and Armenians. This layer would become the "third force" in Iranian
society, alongside the other two forces, the Turkomans and Persians.
The series of campaigns that Tahmāsp subsequently waged after
realising this in the wider
CaucasusCaucasus between 1540 and 1554 were meant
to uphold the morale and the fighting efficiency of the Qizilbash
military,[186] but they brought home large numbers (over 70,000)[187]
of Christian Georgian, Circassian and Armenian slaves as its main
objective, and would be the basis of this third force; the new
(Caucasian) layer in society.[96] According to the Encyclopedia
Iranica, this would be as well the starting point for the corps of the
ḡolāmān-e ḵāṣṣa-ye-e šarifa, or royal slaves, who would
dominate the Safavid military for most of the empire's length, and
would form a crucial part of the third force. As non-Turcoman converts
to Islam, these Circassian and Georgian ḡolāmāns (also written as
ghulams) were completely unrestrained by clan loyalties and kinship
obligations, which was an attractive feature for a ruler like Tahmāsp
whose childhood and upbringing had been deeply affected by Qizilbash
tribal politics.[95] Their formation, implementation, and usage was
very much alike to the janissaries of the neighbouring Ottoman
Empire.[97] In turn, many of these transplanted women became wives and
concubines of Tahmasp, and the Safavid harem emerged as a competitive,
and sometimes lethal, arena of ethnic politics as cliques of Turkmen,
Circassian, and Georgian women and courtiers vied with each other for
the king's attention.[95] Although the first slave soldiers would not
be organized until the reign of Abbas I, during Tahmasp's reign,
Caucasians already became important members of the royal household,
HaremHarem and in the civil and military administration,[98][99] and were
on their way of becoming an integral part of society. Tahmasp I's
successor, Ismail II, brought another 30,000
CircassiansCircassians and Georgians
to
IranIran of which many joined the ghulam force.[188]
Following the full implementation of this policy by Abbas I, the women
(only Circassian and Georgian) now very often came to occupy prominent
positions in the harems of the Safavid elite, while the men who became
part of the ghulam "class" as part of the powerful third force were
given special training on completion of which they were either
enrolled in one of the newly created ghilman regiments, or employed in
the royal household.[189] The rest of the masses of deportees and
importees, a significant portion numbering many hundreds of thousands,
were settled in various regions of mainland Iran, and were given all
kinds of roles as part of society, such as craftsmen, farmers, cattle
breeders, traders, soldiers, generals, governors, woodcutters, etc.,
all also part of the newly established layer in Iranian society.[190]
ShahShah Abbas, who significantly enlargened and completed this program
and under whom the creation of this new layer in society may be
mentioned as fully "finalized", completed the ghulam system as well.
As part of its completion, he greatly expanded the ghulam military
corps from just a few hundred during Tahmāsp's era, to 15,000 highly
trained cavalrymen,[191] as part of a whole army division of 40,000
Caucasian ghulams. He then went on to completely reduce the number of
QizilbashQizilbash provincial governorships and systematically moved qizilbash
governors to other districts, thus disrupting their ties with the
local community, and reducing their power. Most were replaced by a
ghulam, and within short time, Georgians, Circassians, and to a lesser
extent
ArmeniansArmenians had been appointed to many of the highest offices of
state, and were employed within all other possible sections of
society. By 1595, Allahverdi Khan, a Georgian, became one of the most
powerful men in the Safavid state, when he was appointed the
Governor-General of Fars, one of the richest provinces in Persia. And
his power reached its peak in 1598, when he became the
commander-in-chief of the armed forces.[192] Thus, starting from the
reign of Tahmāsp I but only fully implemented and completed by Shah
Abbas, this new group solely composed of ethnic Caucasians eventually
came to constitute a powerful "third force" within the state as a new
layer in society, alongside the Persians and the
QizilbashQizilbash Turks, and
it only goes to prove the meritocratic society of the Safavids.
It is estimated that during Abbas' reign alone some 130,000-200,000
Georgians,[193][136][135][194] tens of thousands of Circassians, and
around 300,000 Armenians[195][196] had been deported and imported from
the
CaucasusCaucasus to mainland Iran, all obtaining functions and roles as
part of the newly created layer in society, such as within the highest
positions of the state, or as farmers, soldiers, craftspeople, as part
of the Royal harem, the Court, and peasantry, amongst others.
Emergence of a clerical aristocracy
An important feature of the Safavid society was the alliance that
emerged between the ulama (the religious class) and the merchant
community. The latter included merchants trading in the bazaars, the
trade and artisan guilds (asnāf) and members of the quasi-religious
organizations run by dervishes (futuvva). Because of the relative
insecurity of property ownership in Persia, many private landowners
secured their lands by donating them to the clergy as so called vaqf.
They would thus retain the official ownership and secure their land
from being confiscated by royal commissioners or local governors, as
long as a percentage of the revenues from the land went to the ulama.
Increasingly, members of the religious class, particularly the
mujtahids and the seyyeds, gained full ownership of these lands, and,
according to contemporary historian Iskandar Munshi,
PersiaPersia started to
witness the emergence of a new and significant group of
landowners.[197]
Akhbaris versus Usulis
The Akhbari movement "crystalized" as a "separate movement" with the
writings of
MuhammadMuhammad Amin al-Astarabadi (died 1627 AD). It rejected
the use of reasoning in deriving verdicts and believed that only the
Quran, hadith, (prophetic sayings and recorded opinions of the Imams)
and consensus should be used as sources to derive verdicts (fatāwā).
Unlike Usulis, Akhbari did and do not follow marjas who practice
ijtihad.[198]
It achieved its greatest influence in the late Safavid and early
post-Safavid era, when it dominated
TwelverTwelver Shia Islam.[199] However,
shortly thereafter
MuhammadMuhammad Baqir Behbahani (died 1792), along with
other
UsuliUsuli mujtahids, crushed the Akhbari movement.[200] It remains
only a small minority in the Shia Muslim world. One result of the
resolution of this conflict was the rise in importance of the concept
of ijtihad and the position of the mujtahid (as opposed to other
ulama) in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It was from this time
that the division of the Shia world into mujtahid (those who could
follow their own independent judgment) and muqallid (those who had to
follow the rulings of a mujtahid) took place. According to author
Moojan Momen, "up to the middle of the 19th century there were very
few mujtahids (three or four) anywhere at any one time," but "several
hundred existed by the end of the 19th century."[201]
Allamah Majlisi
MuhammadMuhammad Baqir Majlisi, commonly referenced to using the title
Allamah, was a highly influential scholar during the 17th century
(Safavid era). Majlisi's works emphasized his desire to purge Twelver
Shi'ism of the influences of mysticism and philosophy, and to
propagate an ideal of strict adherence to the Islamic law
(sharia).[202] Majlisi promoted specifically Shia rituals such as
mourning for Hussein ibn Ali and visitation (ziyarat) of the tombs of
the Imams and Imamzadas, stressing "the concept of the Imams as
mediators and intercessors for man with God."[203]
State and government
The Safavid state was one of checks and balance, both within the
government and on a local level. At the apex of this system was the
Shah, with total power over the state, legitimized by his bloodline as
a seyyed, or descendant of Muhammad. So absolute was his power, that
the French merchant, and later ambassador to Persia, Jean Chardin
thought the Safavid Shahs ruled their land with an iron fist and often
in a despotic manner.[204] To ensure transparency and avoid decisions
being made that circumvented the Shah, a complex system of bureaucracy
and departmental procedures had been put in place that prevented
fraud. Every office had a deputy or superintendent, whose job was to
keep records of all actions of the state officials and report directly
to the Shah. The
ShahShah himself exercised his own measures for keeping
his ministers under control by fostering an atmosphere of rivalry and
competitive surveillance. And since the Safavid society was
meritocratic, and successions seldom were made on the basis of
heritage, this meant that government offices constantly felt the
pressure of being under surveillance and had to make sure they
governed in the best interest of their leader, and not merely their
own.
The Government
There probably did not exist any parliament, as we know them today.
But the Portuguese ambassador to the Safavids, De Gouvea, still
mentions the Council of State[205] in his records, which perhaps was a
term for governmental gatherings of the time.
The highest level in the government was that of the Prime Minister, or
Grand Vizier (Etemad-e Dowlat), who was always chosen from among
doctors of law. He enjoyed tremendous power and control over national
affairs as he was the immediate deputy of the Shah. No act of the Shah
was valid without the counter seal of the Prime Minister. But even he
stood accountable to a deputy (vak’anevis), who kept records of his
decision-makings and notified the Shah. Second to the Prime Minister
post were the General of the Revenues (mostoufi-ye mamalek), or
finance minister,[206] and the Divanbegi, Minister of Justice. The
latter was the final appeal in civil and criminal cases, and his
office stood next to the main entrance to the Ali Qapu palace. In
earlier times, the
ShahShah had been closely involved in judicial
proceedings, but this part of the royal duty was neglected by Shah
Safi and the later kings.[207]
Next in authority were the generals: the General of the Royal Troops
(the Shahsevans), General of the Musketeers, General of the Ghulams
and The Master of Artillery. A separate official, the
Commander-in-Chief, was appointed to be the head of these
officials.[207]
The Royal Court

Frontpage on Jean Chardin's book on his journeys to Persia, published
in 1739.

As for the royal household, the highest post was that of the Nazir,
Court Minister. He was perhaps the closest advisor to the Shah, and,
as such, functioned as his eyes and ears within the Court. His primary
job was to appoint and supervise all the officials of the household
and to be their contact with the Shah. But his responsibilities also
included that of being the treasurer of the Shah's properties. This
meant that even the Prime Minister, who held the highest office in the
state, had to work in association with the Nazir when it came to
managing those transactions that directly related to the Shah.[207]
The second most senior appointment was the Grand Steward (Ichik Agasi
bashi), who would always accompany the
ShahShah and was easily
recognizable because of the great baton that he carried with him. He
was responsible for introducing all guests, receiving petitions
presented to the
ShahShah and reading them if required. Next in line were
the Master of the Royal Stables (Mirakor bashi) and the Master of the
Hunt (Mirshekar bashi). The
ShahShah had stables in all the principal
towns, and
ShahShah Abbas was said to have about 30,000 horses in studs
around the country.[208] In addition to these, there were separate
officials appointed for the caretaking of royal banquets and for
entertainment.
Chardin specifically noticed the rank of doctors and astrologers and
the respect that the Shahs had for them. The
ShahShah had a dozen of each
in his service and would usually be accompanied by three doctors and
three astrologers, who were authorized to sit by his side on various
occasions.[207] The Chief Physician (Hakim-bashi) was a highly
considered member of the Royal court,[209] and the most revered
astrologer of the court was given the title Munajjim-bashi (Chief
Astrologer).[210]
The Safavid court was furthermore a rich mix of peoples from its
earliest days.[211] As Prof. David Blow states, foremost among the
courtiers were the old nobility of Turkoman
QizilbashQizilbash lords and their
sons. Although already by the early years of king Abbas' reign (r.
1588–1629) they were no longer controlling the state, the Turkoman
QizilbashQizilbash continued to provide many of the senior army officers and to
fill important administrative and ceremonial offices in the royal
household.[211] There were the Persians who still dominated the
bureaucracy and under Abbas held the two highest government offices of
Grand Vizier and Comptroller-General of the Revenues (mostoufi-ye
mamalek), which was the nearest thing to a finance minister.[211]
There were also the large number of gholams or "slaves of the shah",
who were mainly Georgians,
CircassiansCircassians and Armenians.[211] As a result
of Abbas' reforms, they held high offices in the army, the
administration and the royal household. Last but by no means least
there were the palace eunuchs who were also ghulams - "white" eunuchs
largely from the Caucasus, and "black" eunuchs from India and
Africa.[211] Under Abbas, the eunuchs became an increasingly important
element at the court.[211]
During the first century of the dynasty, the primary court language
remained Azeri,[206] although this increasingly changed after the
capital was moved to Isfahan.[11] David Blow adds; "it seems likely
that most, if not all, of the Turkoman grandees at the court also
spoke Persian, which was the language of the administration and
culture, as well as of the majority of the population. But the reverse
seems not to have been true. When Abbas had a lively conversation in
Turkish with the Italian traveller Pietro Della Valle, in front of his
courtiers, he had to translate the conversation afterwards into
Persian for the benefit of most of those present."[211] Lastly, due to
the large amount of Georgians, Circassians, and
ArmeniansArmenians at the
Safavid court (the gholams and in the harem), the Georgian, Circassian
and Armenian languages were spoken as well, since these were their
mother tongues.[212] Abbas himself was able to speak Georgian as
well.[213]
Local governments

On a local level, the government was divided into public land and
royal possessions. The public land was under the rule of local
governors, or Khans. Since the earliest days of the Safavid dynasty,
the
QizilbashQizilbash generals had been appointed to most of these posts. They
ruled their provinces like petty shahs and spent all their revenues on
their own province, only presenting the
ShahShah with the balance. In
return, they had to keep ready a standing army at all times and
provide the
ShahShah with military assistance upon his request. It was
also requested from them that they appoint a lawyer (vakil) to the
Court who would inform them on matters pertaining to the provincial
affairs.[214]
ShahShah Abbas I intended to decrease the power of the
QizilbashQizilbash by bringing some of these provinces into his direct control,
creating so called Crown Provinces (Khassa). But it was
ShahShah Safi,
under influence by his Prime Minister, Saru Taqi, that initiated the
program of trying to increase the royal revenues by buying land from
the governors and putting in place local commissioners.[214] In time,
this proved to become a burden to the people that were under the
direct rule of the Shah, as these commissioners, unlike the former
governors, had little knowledge about the local communities that they
controlled and were primarily interested in increasing the income of
the Shah. And, while it was in the governors’ own interest to
increase the productivity and prosperity of their provinces, the
commissioners received their income directly from the royal treasury
and, as such, did not care so much about investing in agriculture and
local industries. Thus, the majority of the people suffered from
rapacity and corruption carried out in the name of the Shah.[214]
Democratic institutions in a totalitarian society
In 16th and 17th century Iran, there existed a considerable number of
local democratic institutions. Examples of such were the trade and
artisan guilds, which had started to appear in
PersiaPersia from the 1500s.
Also, there were the quazi-religious fraternities called futuvva,
which were run by local dervishes. Another official selected by the
consensus of the local community was the kadkhoda, who functioned as a
common law administrator.[215] The local sheriff (kalantar), who was
not elected by the people but directly appointed by the Shah, and
whose function was to protect the people against injustices on the
part of the local governors, supervised the kadkhoda.[216]
Legal system

The Karkan, a tool used for punishment of state criminals

In Safavid
PersiaPersia there was little distinction between theology and
jurisprudence, or between divine justice and human justice, and it all
went under Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). The legal system was built up
of two branches: civil law, which had its roots in sharia, received
wisdom, and urf, meaning traditional experience and very similar to
the Western form of common law. While the imams and judges of law
applied civil law in their practice, urf was primarily exercised by
the local commissioners, who inspected the villages on behalf of the
Shah, and by the Minister of Justice (Divanbegi). The latter were all
secular functionaries working on behalf of the Shah.[217]
The highest level in the legal system was the Minister of Justice, and
the law officers were divided into senior appointments, such as the
magistrate (darughah), inspector (visir), and recorder (vak’anevis).
The lesser officials were the qazi, corresponding a civil lieutenant,
who ranked under the local governors and functioned as judges in the
provinces.
According to Chardin:[218]

There were no particular place assigned for the administration of
justice. Each magistrate executes justice in his own house in a large
room opening on to a courtyard or a garden which is raised two or
three feet above the ground. The Judge is seated at one end of the
room having a writer and a man of law by his side.

Chardin also noted that bringing cases into court in
PersiaPersia was easier
than in the West. The judge (qazi) was informed of relevant points
involved and would decide whether or not to take up the case. Having
agreed to do so, a sergeant would investigate and summon the
defendant, who was then obliged to pay the fee of the sergeant. The
two parties with their witnesses pleaded their respective cases,
usually without any counsel, and the judge would pass his judgment
after the first or second hearing.[218]
Criminal justice was entirely separate from civil law and was judged
upon common law administered through the Minister of Justice, local
governors and the Court minister (the Nazir). Despite being based on
urf, it relied upon certain sets of legal principles. Murder was
punishable by death, and the penalty for bodily injuries was
invariably the bastinado. Robbers had their right wrists amputated the
first time, and sentenced to death on any subsequent occasion. State
criminals were subjected to the karkan, a triangular wooden collar
placed around the neck. On extraordinary occasions when the
ShahShah took
justice into his own hand, he would dress himself up in red for the
importance of the event, according to ancient tradition.[217]
Economy

A 19th-century drawing of Isfahan

The growth of Safavid economy was fuelled by the stability which
allowed the agriculture to thrive, as well as trade, due to Iran's
position between the burgeoning civilizations of Europe to its west
and India and Islamic
Central AsiaCentral Asia to its east and north. The Silk
Road which led through northern
IranIran was revived in the 16th century.
Abbas I also supported direct trade with Europe, particularly England
and The Netherlands which sought Persian carpet, silk and textiles.
Other exports were horses, goat hair, pearls and an inedible bitter
almond hadam-talka used as a spice in India. The main imports were
spice, textiles (woolens from Europe, cottons from Gujarat), metals,
coffee, and sugar.
In the late 17th century, Safavid
PersiaPersia had higher living standards
than in Europe. According to traveller Jean Chardin, for example,
farmers in
PersiaPersia had higher living standards than farmers in the most
fertile European countries.[219]
Agriculture
According to the historian Roger Savory, the twin bases of the
domestic economy were pastoralism and agriculture. And, just as the
higher levels of the social hierarchy was divided between the Turkish
"men of the sword" and the Persian "men of the pen"; so were the lower
level divided between the Turcoman tribes, who were cattle breeders
and lived apart from the surrounding population, and the Persians, who
were settled agriculturalists.[220]
The Safavid economy was to a large extent based on agriculture and
taxation of agricultural products. According to the French jeweller
Jean Chardin, the variety in agricultural products in
PersiaPersia was
unrivaled in Europe and consisted of fruits and vegetables never even
heard of in Europe. Chardin was present at some feasts in
IsfahanIsfahan were
there were more than fifty different kinds of fruit. He thought that
there was nothing like it in France or Italy:[221]

“
Tobacco grew all over the country and was as strong as that grown in
Brazil. Saffron was the best in the world... Melons were regarded as
excellent fruit, and there were more than 50 different sorts, the
finest of which came from Khorasan. And in spite of being transported
for more than thirty days, they were fresh when they reached
Isfahan... After melons the finest fruits were grapes and dates, and
the best dates were grown in Jahrom.
”

Despite this, he was disappointed when travelling the country and
witnessing the abundance of land that was not irrigated, or the
fertile plains that were not cultivated, something he thought was in
stark contrast to Europe. He blamed this on misgovernment, the sparse
population of the country, and lack of appreciation of agriculture
amongst the Persians.[222]
In the period prior to
ShahShah Abbas I, most of the land was assigned to
officials (civil, military and religious). From the time of
ShahShah Abbas
onwards, more land was brought under the direct control of the shah.
And since agriculture accounted for by far largest share of tax
revenue, he took measures to expand it. What remained unchanged, was
the "crop-sharing agreement" between whomever was the landlord, and
the farmer. This agreement concisted of five elements: land, water,
plough-animals, seed and labour. Each element constituted 20 percent
of the crop production, and if, for instance, the farmer provided the
labour force and the animals, he would be entitled to 40 percent of
the earnings.[223][224] According to contemporary historians, though,
the landlord always had the worst of the bargain with the farmer in
the crop-sharing agreements. In general, the farmers lived in comfort,
and they were well paid and wore good clothes, although it was also
noted that they were subject to forced labour and lived under heavy
demands.[225]
Travel and Caravanserais

The Mothers Inn caravanserai in Isfahan, that was built during the
reign of
ShahShah Abbas II, was a luxury resort meant for the wealthiest
merchants and selected guests of the shah. Today it is a luxury hotel
and goes under the name of Hotel Abassi.

Horses were the most important of all the beasts of burden, and the
best were brought in from Arabia and Central-Asia. They were costly
because of the widespread trade in them, including to
TurkeyTurkey and
India. The next most important mount, when traveling through Persia,
was the mule. Also, the camel was a good investment for the merchant,
as they cost nearly nothing to feed, carried a lot weight and could
travel almost anywhere.[226]
Under the governance of the strong shahs, especially during the first
half of the 17th century, traveling through
PersiaPersia was easy because of
good roads and the caravanserais, that were strategically placed along
the route. Thévenot and Tavernier commented that the Persian
caravanserais were better built and cleaner than their Turkish
counterparts.[227] According to Chardin, they were also more abundant
than in the Mughal or Ottoman Empires, where they were less frequent
but larger.[228] Caravanserais were designed especially to benefit
poorer travelers, as they could stay there for as long as they wished,
without payment for lodging. During the reign of
ShahShah Abbas I, as he
tried to upgrade the
Silk routeSilk route to improve the commercial prosperity
of the Empire, an abundance of caravanserais, bridges, bazaars and
roads were built, and this strategy was followed by wealthy merchants
who also profited from the increase in trade. To uphold the standard,
another source of revenue was needed, and road toll, that were
collected by guards (rah-dars), were stationed along the trading
routes. They in turn provided for the safety of the travelers, and
both Thevenot and Tavernier stressed the safety of traveling in 17th
century Persia, and the courtesy and refinement of the policing
guards.[229] The Italian traveler
Pietro Della VallePietro Della Valle was impressed by
an encounter with one of these road guards:[230]

“
He examined our baggage, but in the most obliging manner possible, not
opening our trunks or packages, and was satisfied with a small tax,
which was his due...
”

The Portuguese
EmpireEmpire and the discovery of the trading route around
the
Cape of Good HopeCape of Good Hope in 1487 not only hit a death blow to
VeniceVenice as a
trading nation, but it also hurt the trade that was going on along the
Silk RouteSilk Route and especially the Persian Gulf. They correctly identified
the three key points to control all seaborne trade between Asia and
Europe: The Gulf of Aden, The
Persian GulfPersian Gulf and the Straits of Malacca
by cutting off and controlling these strategic locations with high
taxation.[231] In 1602,
ShahShah Abbas I drove the Portuguese out of
Bahrain, but he needed naval assistance from the newly arrived British
East India CompanyEast India Company to finally expel them from the
Strait of HormuzStrait of Hormuz and
regain control of this trading route.[232] He convinced the British to
assist him by allowing them to open factories in Shiraz,
IsfahanIsfahan and
Jask.[233][234] With the later end of the Portuguese Empire, the
British, Dutch and French in particular gained easier access to
Persian seaborne trade, although they, unlike the Portuguese, did not
arrive as colonisers, but as merchant adventurers. The terms of trade
were not imposed on the Safavid shahs, but rather negotiated.

The Silk Routes

In the long term, however, the seaborne trade route was of less
significance to the Persians than was the traditional Silk Route. Lack
of investment in ship building and the navy provided the Europeans
with the opportunity to monopolize this trading route. The land-borne
trade would thus continue to provide the bulk of revenues to the
Persian state from transit taxes. The revenue came not so much from
exports, as from the custom charges and transit dues levied on goods
passing through the country.[235]
ShahShah Abbas was determined to greatly
expand this trade, but faced the problem of having to deal with the
Ottomans, who controlled the two most vital routes: the route across
Arabia to the Mediterranean ports, and the route through
AnatoliaAnatolia and
Istanbul. A third route was therefore devised which circumvented
Ottoman territory. By travelling across the
Caspian seaCaspian sea to the north,
they would reach Russia. And with the assistance of the Muscovy
Company they could cross over to Moscow, reaching Europe via Poland.
This trading route proved to be of vital importance, especially during
times of war with the Ottomans.[236]
By the end of the 17th century, the Dutch had become dominant in the
trade that went via the Persian Gulf, having won most trade
agreements, and managed to strike deals before the British or French
were able to. They particularly established monopoly of the spice
trade between the East Indies and Iran.[237]
The Armenian merchants and the trade of silk

The one valuable item, sought for in Europe, which
IranIran possessed and
which could bring in silver in sufficient quantities was silk, which
was produced in the northern provinces, along the Caspian coastline.
The trade of this product was done by Turks and Persians to begin
with, but during the 17th century the Christian
ArmeniansArmenians became
increasingly vital in the trade of this merchandise, as
middlemen.[238]
Whereas domestic trade was largely in the hands of Persian and Jewish
merchants, by the late 17th century, almost all foreign trade was
controlled by the Armenians.[239] They were even hired by wealthy
Persian merchants to travel to Europe when they wanted to create
commercial bases there, and the
ArmeniansArmenians eventually established
themselves in cities like Bursa, Aleppo, Venice, Livorno, Marseilles
and Amsterdam.[238] Realizing this,
ShahShah Abbas resettled large numbers
of
ArmeniansArmenians from the
CaucasusCaucasus to his capital city and provided them
with loans.[238] And as the shah realized the importance of doing
trade with the Europeans, he assured that the Safavid society was one
with religious tolerance. The Christian
ArmeniansArmenians thus became a
commercial elite in the Safavid society and managed to survive in the
tough atmosphere of business being fought over by the British, Dutch,
French, Indians and Persians, by always having large capital readily
available and by managing to strike harder bargains ensuring cheaper
prices than what, for instance, their British rivals ever were able
to.[240]
Culture
See also: Safavid art

Persian art

Visual arts

Art
Miniature
Carpets
Calligraphy

Decorative arts

Arts of Iran
Jewelry
Embroidery
Motifs
Tilework
Handicrafts
Pottery

Literature

Literature
Mythology
Folklore
Philosophy

Performance arts

Dance
Music
Cinema
Theatre

Other

Architecture
Cuisine
Gardens

v
t
e

Naqshe Jahan square in
IsfahanIsfahan is the epitome of 16th-century Iranian
architecture.

Culture within the Safavid family
The Safavid family was a literate family from its early origin. There
are extant Tati and Persian poetry from Shaykh Safi ad-din Ardabili as
well as extant Persian poetry from Shaykh Sadr ad-din. Most of the
extant poetry of
ShahShahIsmail IIsmail I is in Azerbaijani pen-name of
Khatai.[61] Sam Mirza, the son of
ShahShah Esmail as well as some later
authors assert that Ismail composed poems both in Turkish and Persian
but only a few specimens of his Persian verse have survived.[60] A
collection of his poems in Azeri were published as a Divan. Shah
Tahmasp who has composed poetry in Persian was also a painter, while
ShahShah Abbas II was known as a poet, writing Azerbaijani verses.[241]
Sam Mirza, the son of
Ismail IIsmail I was himself a poet and composed his
poetry in Persian. He also compiled an anthology of contemporary
poetry.[242]
Culture within the empire
ShahShah Abbas I recognized the commercial benefit of promoting the
arts—artisan products provided much of Iran's foreign trade. In this
period, handicrafts such as tile making, pottery and textiles
developed and great advances were made in miniature painting,
bookbinding, decoration and calligraphy. In the 16th century, carpet
weaving evolved from a nomadic and peasant craft to a well-executed
industry with specialization of design and manufacturing.
TabrizTabriz was
the center of this industry. The carpets of
ArdabilArdabil were commissioned
to commemorate the Safavid dynasty. The elegantly baroque yet famously
'Polonaise' carpets were made in
IranIran during the 17th century.

Using traditional forms and materials,
Reza AbbasiReza Abbasi (1565–1635)
introduced new subjects to Persian painting—semi-nude women, youth,
lovers. His painting and calligraphic style influenced Iranian artists
for much of the Safavid period, which came to be known as the Isfahan
school. Increased contact with distant cultures in the 17th century,
especially Europe, provided a boost of inspiration to Iranian artists
who adopted modeling, foreshortening, spatial recession, and the
medium of oil painting (
ShahShah Abbas II sent
MuhammadMuhammad Zaman to study in
Rome). The epic
ShahnamehShahnameh ("Book of Kings"), a stellar example of
manuscript illumination and calligraphy, was made during Shah
Tahmasp's reign. (This book was written by Ferdousi in 1000 AD for
Sultan Mahmood Ghaznawi) Another manuscript is the Khamsa by Nizami
executed 1539-43 by
Aqa MirakAqa Mirak and his school in Isfahan.
IsfahanIsfahan bears the most prominent samples of the Safavid architecture,
all constructed in the years after
ShahShah Abbas I permanently moved the
capital there in 1598: the Imperial Mosque, Masjid-e Shah, completed
in 1630, the
ImamImam Mosque (Masjid-e Imami) the Lutfallah Mosque and the
Royal Palace.
According to William Cleveland and Martin Bunton,[243] the
establishment of
IsfahanIsfahan as the Great capital of
PersiaPersia and the
material splendor of the city attracted intellecutal's from all
corners of the world, which contributed to the cities rich cultural
life. The impressive achievements of its 400,000 residents prompted
the inhabitants to coin their famous boast, "
IsfahanIsfahan is half the
world".
Poetry stagnated under the Safavids; the great medieval ghazal form
languished in over-the-top lyricism. Poetry lacked the royal patronage
of other arts and was hemmed in by religious prescriptions.
The arguably most renowned historian from this time was Iskandar Beg
Munshi. His History of
ShahShahAbbas the GreatAbbas the Great written a few years after
its subject's death, achieved a nuanced depth of history and
character.
The
IsfahanIsfahan School—Islamic philosophy revived
See also: School of Isfahan, Mulla Sadra, Mir Damad, Mir Fendereski,
Shaykh Bahai, and Mohsen Fayz Kashani
Islamic philosophy[244] flourished in the Safavid era in what scholars
commonly refer to the School of Isfahan.
Mir Damad is considered the
founder of this school. Among luminaries of this school of philosophy,
the names of Iranian philosophers such as Mir Damad, Mir Fendereski,
Shaykh BahaiShaykh Bahai and
Mohsen Fayz Kashani standout. The school reached its
apogee with that of the Iranian philosopher
Mulla SadraMulla Sadra who is
arguably the most significant Islamic philosopher after Avicenna.
Mulla SadraMulla Sadra has become the dominant philosopher of the Islamic East,
and his approach to the nature of philosophy has been exceptionally
influential up to this day.[245] He wrote the Al-Hikma al-muta‘aliya
fi-l-asfar al-‘aqliyya al-arba‘a ("The Transcendent Philosophy of
the Four Journeys of the Intellect"),[246] a meditation on what he
called 'meta philosophy' which brought to a synthesis the
philosophical mysticism of Sufism, the theology of Shi'a Islam, and
the Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophies of
AvicennaAvicenna and
Suhrawardi.
According to the
IranologistIranologist Richard Nelson Frye:[247]

They were the continuers of the classical tradition of Islamic
thought, which after Averroes died in the Arab west. The Persians
schools of thought were the true heirs of the great Islamic thinkers
of the golden age of Islam, whereas in the Ottoman empire there was an
intellectual stagnation, as far as the traditions of Islamic
philosophy were concerned.

Medicine

A Latin copy of The Canon of Medicine, dated 1484, located at the P.I.
Nixon Medical Historical Library of The University of Texas Health
Science Center at San Antonio, USA.

The status of physicians during the Safavids stood as high as ever.
Whereas neither the ancient Greeks nor the Romans accorded high social
status to their doctors, Iranians had from ancient times honored their
physicians, who were often appointed counselors of the Shahs. This
would not change with the Arab conquest of Iran, and it was primarily
the Persians that took upon them the works of philosophy, logic,
medicine, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, music and alchemy.[248]
By the sixteenth century, Islamic science, which to a large extent
meant Persian science, was resting on its laurels. The works of
al-Razi (865-92) (known to the West as Razes) were still used in
European universities as standard textbooks of alchemy, pharmacology
and pediatrics.
The Canon of MedicineThe Canon of Medicine by
AvicennaAvicenna (c. 980–1037) was
still regarded as one of the primary textbooks in medicine throughout
most of the civilized world.[249] As such, the status of medicine in
the Safavid period did not change much, and relied as much on these
works as ever before.
PhysiologyPhysiology was still based on the four humours
of ancient and mediaeval medicine, and bleeding and purging were still
the principal forms of therapy by surgeons, something even Thevenot
experienced during his visit to Persia.[209]
The only field within medicine where some progress were made was
pharmacology, with the compilement of the "Tibb-e Shifa’i" in 1556.
This book was translated into French in 1681 by Angulus de Saint,
under the name "Pharmacopoea Persica".[250]
Architecture
See also: Persian architecture

A new age in
Iranian architectureIranian architecture began with the rise of the Safavid
dynasty. Economically robust and politically stable, this period saw a
flourishing growth of theological sciences. Traditional architecture
evolved in its patterns and methods leaving its impact on the
architecture of the following periods.
Indeed, one of the greatest legacies of the Safavids is the
architecture. In 1598, when
ShahShah Abbas decided to move the capital of
his Persian empire from the north-western city of
QazvinQazvin to the
central city of Isfahan, he initiated what would become one of the
greatest programmes in Persian history; the complete remaking of the
city. By choosing the central city of Isfahan, fertilized by the
Zāyande roud ("The life-giving river"), lying as an oasis of intense
cultivation in the midst of a vast area of arid landscape, he both
distanced his capital from any future assaults by the
Ottomans and the
Uzbeks, and at the same time gained more control over the Persian
Gulf, which had recently become an important trading route for the
Dutch and British East India Companies.[251]

The 16th-century Chehel Sotun pavilion in Qazvin, Iran. It is the last
remains of the palace of the second Safavid king,
ShahShah Tahmasp; it was
heavily restored by the Qajars in the 19th century.

The Chief architect of this colossal task of urban planning was Shaykh
Bahai (Baha' ad-Din al-`Amili), who focused the programme on two key
features of
ShahShah Abbas's master plan: the Chahar Bagh avenue, flanked
at either side by all the prominent institutions of the city, such as
the residences of all foreign dignitaries. And the Naqsh-e Jahan
Square ("Examplar of the World").[252] Prior to the Shah's ascent to
power,
PersiaPersia had a decentralized power-structure, in which different
institutions battled for power, including both the military (the
Qizilbash) and governors of the different provinces making up the
empire.
ShahShah Abbas wanted to undermine this political structure, and
the recreation of Isfahan, as a Grand capital of Persia, was an
important step in centralizing the power.[253] The ingenuity of the
square, or Maidān, was that, by building it,
ShahShah Abbas would gather
the three main components of power in
PersiaPersia in his own backyard; the
power of the clergy, represented by the Masjed-e Shah, the power of
the merchants, represented by the Imperial Bazaar, and of course, the
power of the
ShahShah himself, residing in the Ali Qapu Palace.
Distinctive monuments like the Sheikh Lotfallah (1618), Hasht Behesht
(Eight Paradise Palace) (1469) and the Chahar Bagh School(1714)
appeared in
IsfahanIsfahan and other cities. This extensive development of
architecture was rooted in Persian culture and took form in the design
of schools, baths, houses, caravanserai and other urban spaces such as
bazaars and squares. It continued until the end of the Qajar
reign.[254]
The languages of the court, military, administration and culture
The Safavids by the time of their rise were Azerbaijani-speaking
although they also used Persian as a second language. The language
chiefly used by the Safavid court and military establishment was
Azerbaijani.[13][19] But the official[7] language of the empire as
well as the administrative language, language of correspondence,
literature and historiography was Persian.[13] The inscriptions on
Safavid currency were also in Persian.[255]

Scene from Attar's The Conference of the Birds, by Habibulla Meshedi
(1600).

Safavids also used Persian as a cultural and administrative language
throughout the empire and were bilingual in Persian.[61] According to
Arnold J. Toynbee,[256]

In the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian
was being patronized as the language of litterae humaniores by the
ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also
being employed as the official language of administration in those
two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal
frontiers

According to John R. Perry,[257]

In the 16th century, the Turcophone Safavid family of
ArdabilArdabil in
Azerbaijan, probably of Turkicized Iranian, origin, conquered
IranIran and
established Turkic, the language of the court and the military, as a
high-status vernacular and a widespread contact language, influencing
spoken Persian, while written Persian, the language of high literature
and civil administration, remained virtually unaffected in status and
content.

According to Zabiollah Safa,[19]

In day-to-day affairs, the language chiefly used at the Safavid court
and by the great military and political officers, as well as the
religious dignitaries, was Turkish, not Persian; and the last class of
persons wrote their religious works mainly in Arabic. Those who wrote
in Persian were either lacking in proper tuition in this tongue, or
wrote outside
IranIran and hence at a distance from centers where Persian
was the accepted vernacular, endued with that vitality and
susceptibility to skill in its use which a language can have only in
places where it truly belongs.

A specific Turkic language was attested in Safavid
PersiaPersia during the
16th and 17th centuries, a language that Europeans often called
Persian Turkish ("Turc Agemi", "lingua turcica agemica"), which was a
favourite language at the court and in the army because of the Turkic
origins of the Safavid dynasty. The original name was just turki, and
so a convenient name might be Turki-yi Acemi. This variety of Persian
Turkish must have been also spoken in the Caucasian and Transcaucasian
regions, which during the 16th century belonged to both the Ottomans
and the Safavids, and were not fully integrated into the Safavid
empire until 1606. Though that language might generally be identified
as Middle Azerbaijanian, it is not yet possible to define exactly the
limits of this language, both in linguistic and territorial respects.
It was certainly not homogenous—maybe it was an
Azerbaijanian-Ottoman mixed language, as Beltadze (1967:161) states
for a translation of the gospels in Georgian script from the 18th
century.

According to Rula Jurdi Abisaab,[258]

Although the Arabic language was still the medium for religious
scholastic expression, it was precisely under the Safavids that hadith
complications and doctrinal works of all sorts were being translated
to Persian. The 'Amili (Lebanese scholars of Shi'i faith) operating
through the Court-based religious posts, were forced to master the
Persian language; their students translated their instructions into
Persian. Persianization went hand in hand with the popularization of
'mainstream' Shi'i belief.

The primary court language [with Abbas I's reign (r. 1588–1629)]
remained Turkish. But it was not the Turkish of Istanbul. It was a
Turkish dialect, the dialect of the
QizilbashQizilbash Turkomans, which is
still spoken today in the province of Azerbaijan, in north-western
Iran. This form of Turkish was also the mother-tongue of
ShahShah Abbas,
although he was equally at ease speaking Persian. It seems likely that
most, if not all, of the Turkoman grandees at the court also spoke
Persian, which was the language of the administration and culture, as
well as of the majority of the population. But the reverse seems not
to have been true. When Abbas had a lively conversation in Turkish
with the Italian traveller Pietro Della Valle, in front of his
courtiers, he had to translate the conversation afterwards into
Persian for the benefit of most of those present.

Regarding the usage of Georgian, Circassian and Armenian at the Royal
Court, David Blow states,[212]

Georgian, Circassian and Armenian were also spoken, since these were
the mother-tongues of many of the ghulams, as well as of a high
proportion of the women of the harem. Figueroa heard Abbas speak
Georgian, which he had no doubt acquired from his Georgian ghulams and
concubines.

Legacy
It was the Safavids who made
IranIran the spiritual bastion of Shi’ism,
and the repository of Persian cultural traditions and self-awareness
of Iranianhood, acting as a bridge to modern Iran. The founder of the
dynasty,
ShahShah Isma'il, adopted the title of "Persian Emperor"
Pādišah-ī Īrān, with its implicit notion of an Iranian state
stretching from Khorasan as far as Euphrates, and from the
OxusOxus to the
southern Territories of the Persian Gulf.[260] According to Professor
Roger Savory:[261][262]

In a number of ways the Safavids affected the development of the
modern Iranian state: first, they ensured the continuance of various
ancient and traditional Persian institutions, and transmitted these in
a strengthened, or more 'national', form; second, by imposing Ithna
'Ashari
Shi'a IslamShi'a Islam on
IranIran as the official religion of the Safavid
state, they enhanced the power of mujtahids. The Safavids thus set in
train a struggle for power between the turban and the crown that is to
say, between the proponents of secular government and the proponents
of a theocratic government; third, they laid the foundation of
alliance between the religious classes ('Ulama') and the bazaar which
played an important role both in the Persian Constitutional Revolution
of 1905–1906, and again in the Islamic Revolution of 1979; fourth
the policies introduced by
ShahShah Abbas I conduced to a more centralized
administrative system.

The empire presided over by the Safavids was not a revival of the
AchaemenidsAchaemenids or the Sasanians, and it more resembled the
IlkhanateIlkhanate and
Timurid empires than the Islamic caliphate. Nor was it a direct
precursor to the modern Iranian state. According to Donald Struesand,
"[a]lthough the Safavid unification of the eastern and western halves
of the Iranian plateau and imposition of
TwelverTwelver Shii Islam on the
region created a recognizable precursor of modern Iran, the Safavid
polity itself was neither distinctively Iranian nor national."[263]
Rudolph Matthee concluded that "[t]hough not a nation-state, Safavid
IranIran contained the elements that would later spawn one by generating
many enduring bureaucratic features and by initiating a polity of
overlapping religious and territorial boundaries."[264]
Safavid Shahs of Iran

PersianatePersianate states
List of Shi'a Muslim dynasties
Safavid conversion of
IranIran from Sunnism to Shiism
List of the mothers of the Safavid Shahs
Khanates of the Caucasus
Safavid art

References and notes

^ mulk-i vasi' al-fazā-yi īrān
^ Matthee* Matthee, Rudi (1 September 2009). "Was Safavid
IranIran an
Empire?". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 53
(1): 241. doi:10.1163/002249910X12573963244449. The term 'Iran', which
after an absence of some six centuries had re-entered usage with the
Ilkhanid branch of the Mongols, conveyed a shared self-awareness among
the political and cultural elite of a geographical entity with
distinct territorial and political implications. A core element of the
Safavid achievement was the notion that the dynasty had united the
eastern and western halves of Iran, Khurasan and Herat, the lands of
the Timurids, in the East, and the territory of the Aq-Quyunlu in the
West. The term mulk-i vasi' al-faza-yi Iran, 'the expansive realm of
Iran', found in the seventeenth-century chronicle, Khuld-i barin, and
again, in near identical terms, in the travelogue of
MuhammadMuhammad Rabi
ShahShah Sulayman's envoy to Siam in the 1680s, similarly conveys the
authors pride and self-consciousness with regard to the territory they
inhabited or hailed from.
^ mamlikat-i īrān
^ Savory, Roger (2 January 2007). "The Safavid state and polity".
Iranian Studies. 7 (1-2): 206. doi:10.1080/00210867408701463. The
somewhat vague phrase used during the early Safavid period, mamalik-i
mahrusa, had assumed more concrete forms: mamālik-i īrān;
mamālik-i 'ajam; mamlikat-i īrān; mulk-i īrān; or simply īrān.
The royal throne was variously described as sarīr-i saltanat-i
īrān; takht-i īrān; and takht-i sultān (sic)-i īrān. The
inhabitants of the Safavid empire are referred to as ahl-i īrān, and
Iskandar Beg describes himself as writing the history of the Iranians
(sharh-i ahvāl-i īrān va īrāniān).
ShahShah Abbas I is described as
farmānravā-yi īrān and shahryār-i īrān; his seat is
pāyitakht-i pādishāhān-i īrān, takhtgāh-i salātin-i īrān, or
dār al-mulk-i īrān. His sovereign power is referred to as
farmāndahi-yi mulk-i īrān, saltanat va pādishāhi-yi īrān,
pādishāhi-yi īrān. The cities of
IranIran (bilād-i īrān) are
thought of as belonging to a positive entity or state:
HeratHerat is
referred to as a'zam-i bilād-i īrān (the greatest of the cities of
Iran) and
IsfahanIsfahan as khulāsa-yi mulk-i īrān (the choicest part of
the realm of Iran). ... The sense of geographical continuity referred
to earlier is preserved by a phrase like kull-i vilāyat-i
īrānzamīn. ... Affairs of state are referred to as muhimmāt-i
īrān. To my mind however, one of the clearest indications that the
Safavid state had become a state in the full sense of the word is
provided by the revival of the ancient title of sipahsālār-i īrān
or "commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Iran".
^ Ingvild Flaskerud (26 November 2010). Visualizing Belief and Piety
in Iranian Shiism. Continuum International Publishing Group.
pp. 182–183. ISBN 978-1-4411-4907-7. Retrieved 24 July
2011.
^ "... the Order of the Lion and the Sun, a device which, since
the 17 century at least, appeared on the national flag of the Safavids
the lion representing 'Ali and the sun the glory of the Shi'i faith",
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovskiĭ, J. M. Rogers, Hermitage Rooms at
Somerset House, Courtauld Institute of Art, Heaven on earth:
ArtArt from
Islamic Lands: Works from the State Hermitage Museum and the Khalili
Collection, Prestel, 2004, p. 178.
^ a b Roemer, H. R. (1986). "The Safavid Period". The Cambridge
History of Iran, Vol. 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 189–350. ISBN 0-521-20094-6, p.
331: "Depressing though the condition in the country may have been at
the time of the fall of Safavids, they cannot be allowed to overshadow
the achievements of the dynasty, which was in many respects to prove
essential factors in the development of
PersiaPersia in modern times. These
include the maintenance of Persian as the official language and of the
present-day boundaries of the country, adherence to the Twelever
Shi'i, the monarchical system, the planning and architectural features
of the urban centers, the centralised administration of the state, the
alliance of the Shi'i
UlamaUlama with the merchant bazaars, and the
symbiosis of the Persian-speaking population with important
non-Persian, especially Turkish speaking minorities".
^ a b c Rudi Matthee, "Safavids" in Encyclopædia Iranica, accessed on
April 4, 2010. "The Persian focus is also reflected in the fact that
theological works also began to be composed in the Persian language
and in that Persian verses replaced Arabic on the coins." "The
political system that emerged under them had overlapping political and
religious boundaries and a core language, Persian, which served as the
literary tongue, and even began to replace Arabic as the vehicle for
theological discourse".
^ Ronald W Ferrier, The Arts of Persia. Yale University Press. 1989,
p. 9.
^ a b John R Perry, "Turkic-Iranian contacts", Encyclopædia Iranica,
January 24, 2006: "... written Persian, the language of high
literature and civil administration, remained virtually unaffected in
status and content"
^ a b Cyril Glassé (ed.), The New Encyclopedia of Islam, Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, revised ed., 2003,
ISBN 0-7591-0190-6, p. 392: "
ShahShah Abbas moved his capital from
QazvinQazvin to Isfahan. His reigned marked the peak of Safavid dynasty's
achievement in art, diplomacy, and commerce. It was probably around
this time that the court, which originally spoke a Turkic language,
began to use Persian"
^ Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, V, pp. 514-515. Excerpt: "in
the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was
being patronized as the language of literae humaniores by the ruling
element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being
employed as the official language of administration in those
two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal
frontiers"
^ a b c d Mazzaoui, Michel B; Canfield, Robert (2002). "Islamic
Culture and
LiteratureLiterature in
IranIran and
Central AsiaCentral Asia in the early modern
period". Turko-
PersiaPersia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge University
Press. pp. 86–7. ISBN 978-0-521-52291-5. Safavid power
with its distinctive Persian-Shi'i culture, however, remained a middle
ground between its two mighty Turkish neighbors. The Safavid state,
which lasted at least until 1722, was essentially a "Turkish" dynasty,
with Azeri Turkish (
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan being the family's home base) as the
language of the rulers and the court as well as the
QizilbashQizilbash military
establishment.
ShahShah Ismail wrote poetry in Turkish. The administration
nevertheless was Persian, and the
Persian languagePersian language was the vehicle of
diplomatic correspondence (insha'), of belles-lettres (adab), and of
history (tarikh).
^ Ruda Jurdi Abisaab. "
IranIran and Pre-Independence Lebanon" in Houchang
Esfandiar Chehabi, Distant Relations:
IranIran and Lebanon in the Last 500
Years, IB Tauris 2006, p. 76: "Although the Arabic language was still
the medium for religious scholastic expression, it was precisely under
the Safavids that hadith complications and doctrinal works of all
sorts were being translated to Persian. The 'Amili (Lebanese scholars
of Shi'i faith) operating through the Court-based religious posts,
were forced to master the Persian language; their students translated
their instructions into Persian. Persianization went hand in hand with
the popularization of 'mainstream' Shi'i belief."
^ Floor, Willem; Javadi, Hasan (2013). "The Role of Azerbaijani
Turkish in Safavid Iran". Iranian Studies. 46 (4): 569–581.
doi:10.1080/00210862.2013.784516.
^ Hovannisian, Richard G.; Sabagh, Georges (1998). The Persian
Presence in the Islamic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
p. 240. ISBN 978-0521591850.
^ Axworthy, Michael (2010). The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from
Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant. I.B.Tauris. p. 33.
ISBN 978-0857721938.
^ a b Savory, Roger (2007).
IranIran Under the Safavids. Cambridge
University Press. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-521-04251-2. qizilbash
normally spoke Azari brand of Turkish at court, as did the Safavid
shahs themselves; lack of familiarity with the
Persian languagePersian language may
have contributed to the decline from the pure classical standards of
former times
^ a b c Zabiollah Safa (1986), "Persian
LiteratureLiterature in the Safavid
Period", The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6: The Timurid and
Safavid Periods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
ISBN 0-521-20094-6, pp. 948–65. P. 950: "In day-to-day affairs,
the language chiefly used at the Safavid court and by the great
military and political officers, as well as the religious dignitaries,
was Turkish, not Persian; and the last class of persons wrote their
religious works mainly in Arabic. Those who wrote in Persian were
either lacking in proper tuition in this tongue, or wrote outside Iran
and hence at a distance from centers where Persian was the accepted
vernacular, endued with that vitality and susceptibility to skill in
its use which a language can have only in places where it truly
belongs."
^ Price, Massoume (2005). Iran's Diverse Peoples: A Reference
Sourcebook. ABC-CLIO. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-57607-993-5. The
ShahShah was a native Turkic speaker and wrote poetry in the Azerbaijani
language.
^ Blow, David (2009).
ShahShah Abbas: The Ruthless King Who Became an
Iranian Legend. I.B.Tauris. pp. 165–166.
ISBN 978-0857716767. Georgian, Circassian and Armenian were also
spoken [at the court], since these were the mother-tongues of many of
the ghulams, as well as of a high proportion of the women of the
harem. Figueroa heard Abbas speak Georgian, which he had no doubt
acquired from his Georgian ghulams and concubines.
^ Ferrier, RW, A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin's Portrait of a
Seventeenth-century Empire, p. ix.
^ The New Encyclopedia of Islam, Ed. Cyril Glassé, (Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 449.
^

Blow, David (2009).
ShahShah Abbas: The Ruthless King Who Became an
Iranian Legend. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-0857716767.
Jackson, Peter; Lockhart, Laurence, eds. (1986). The Timurid and
Safavid Periods. The Cambridge History of Iran. 6. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521200943.
Khanbaghi, Aptin (2006). The Fire, the Star and the Cross: Minority
Religions in Medieval and Early Modern Iran. I.B. Tauris.
ISBN 978-1845110567.
Kremer, William (25 January 2013). "Why Did Men Stop Wearing High
Heels?". BBC News Magazine. Archived from the original on 13 September
2014. Retrieved 13 September 2014.
Mikaberidze, Alexander (2015). Historical Dictionary of Georgia (2
ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1442241466.
Savory, Roger (2007).
IranIran under the Safavids. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0521042512.
Sicker, Martin (2001). The Islamic World in Decline: From the Treaty
of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Greenwood
Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0275968915.
Yarshater, Ehsan (2001). Encyclopedia Iranica. Routledge & Kegan
Paul. ISBN 0933273568.

Further reading

Christoph Marcinkowski (tr.),Persian Historiography and Geography:
Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central
Asia, India and Early Ottoman Turkey, Singapore: Pustaka Nasional,
2003, ISBN 9971-77-488-7.
Christoph Marcinkowski (tr., ed.),Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk: A
Manual of Later Safavid Administration. Annotated English Translation,
Comments on the Offices and Services, and Facsimile of the Unique
Persian Manuscript, Kuala Lumpur, ISTAC, 2002,
ISBN 983-9379-26-7.
Christoph Marcinkowski,From
IsfahanIsfahan to Ayutthaya: Contacts between
IranIran and Siam in the 17th Century, Singapore, Pustaka Nasional, 2005,
ISBN 9971-77-491-7.
"The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors", Adam Olearius,
translated by John Davies (1662),

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Safavid dynasty.

History of the Safavids on
IranIran Chamber
"Safavid dynasty",
Encyclopædia Iranica by Rudi Matthee
The History Files: Rulers of Persia
BBC History of Religion
Iranian culture and history site
"
GeorgiansGeorgians in the Safavid administration", Encyclopædia Iranica
Artistic and cultural history of the Safavids from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art
History of Safavid art
A Study of the Migration of Shi'i Works from Arab Regions to
IranIran at
the Early Safavid Era.
Why is Safavid history important? (
IranIran Chamber Society)
Historiography During the Safawid Era
"IRAN ix. RELIGIONS IN IRAN (2) Islam in
IranIran (2.3) Shiʿism in Iran
Since the Safavids: Safavid Period",
Encyclopædia Iranica by Hamid
Algar

Ancient Iran
Greater Iran
Iranic peoples (languages)
Kura–Araxes culture
Jiroft culture
Aryans
Persian people
Azerbaijanis
Caucasian peoples
Kings of Persia
Heads of state
Cities
Military history
History of democracy
List of years in Iran